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Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure after a lengthy conversation with President Donald Trump, taking a step toward a possible end to the war in a discussion that took place over the head of Kiev and appeared to hand Putin significant concessions.
A top Russian official, Kirill Dmitriev, deemed it "a PERFECT call," capturing the Kremlin's glee at the sharp turnabout in White House attitudes toward Russia after Trump's reorientation of generations of U.S. policy. It was not immediately clear whether Ukraine would sign off on the agreement for a 30-day halt on strikes on energy and infrastructure, since Kiev agreed last week to a more extensive U.S.-proposed ceasefire.
The energy infrastructure ceasefire was more limited than the broader halt to hostilities that Trump had sought and that the Ukrainians endorsed last week, an apparent concession to Putin. Russia and Ukraine began secret talks last year on a mutual halt on strikes on energy infrastructure, but the conversations ended after Kiev seized Russian territory in a surprise incursion in August. Trump and Putin also agreed Tuesday to start negotiating a maritime ceasefire that would lead to a full ceasefire and a permanent peace.
But the details of the peace proposals were secondary to the extraordinary olive branch that Trump handed to Putin in the form of the call itself. Putin has long mourned Russia's loss of superpower status following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and he recaptured some of that role as the two men hashed out a wider menu of world events during what the Kremlin said was a 2.5-hour call.
Over Putin's 25 years in power, he has sought through military force, sabotage and political influence campaigns to restore the Kremlin to equal status alongside the White House in determining world events - a role far out of line with Russia's shrunken economic might. No U.S. president until Trump has agreed to elevate Putin to that near-peer level.
"My phone conversation today with President Putin of Russia was a very good and productive one," Trump posted on Truth Social. "We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine."
For all the comity between Trump and Putin, it was still unclear whether the U.S. leader would be able to achieve peace, with Russia issuing public demands for even more territorial concessions and also rejecting any European troop presence inside Ukraine, the baseline that Kiev has said it would need to feel assured that the Kremlin would not simply rebuild its military and reinvade.
Neither the White House nor the Kremlin accounts of the call referenced European security forces in Ukraine.
The Kremlin released an extensive summary of the call that said that the two leaders had agreed to joint talks on a sweep of world crises, including in the Middle East. It referenced "the special responsibility of Russia and the United States for ensuring security and stability in the world," and praised the "joint vote in the U.N." last month in which Washington sided with Russia, North Korea and Belarus and against Ukraine and U.S. allies on resolutions marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Putin "expressed gratitude" to Trump for efforts "to help achieve the noble goal of ending hostilities and human losses," the Kremlin said, without noting that the hostilities were started when Russia itself invaded the sovereign territory of its neighbor and sought to eliminate Ukraine as an independent nation.
The Kremlin said that Putin had directed his military immediately to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. But broader attacks appeared to continue unabated, as air raid sirens sounded over Kiev in the hours after the call warning that Russian drones had entered Ukrainian airspace.
The two sides will discuss a maritime ceasefire and eventually a "full ceasefire and permanent peace," the White House said in its summary of the call, which said that negotiations will start immediately in the Middle East.
"The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved," the White House said.
The conversation came after weeks in which Trump has repositioned U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia, at times appearing to take the aggressor's side against Kiev and its shocked European backers. Trump has called Ukraine's democratically elected leader a dictator, blamed Kiev for being invaded and ejected President Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House following an angry meeting last month.
Top Russian officials cheered the conversation, embracing the moment with a positive tone that would have seemed unfathomable at any previous moment since the Kremlin annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula 11 years ago and plunged relations with Washington into an ice bath.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately react publicly to the call - in part, one official said, because they needed to be caught up on the details after having been cutting out of the bilateral discussion between Washington and Moscow about their future.
"We've got limited information for now, but Black Sea deal and energy infrastructure deal are good options for the beginning," one senior Ukrainian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about initial reactions prior to a final governmental decision. The official said Kiev will "most likely go with it."
Ukraine's secondary role was notable given how much was at stake for the country and how much else appeared to be agreed between the U.S. and Russian leaders. The Kremlin said that Trump had agreed to a Putin suggestion "to organize hockey matches in the United States and Russia between Russian and American players" who play in the NHL and the Russian national hockey league - a notably conciliatory step so long as Russia continues to wage war on Ukraine.
"Under the leadership of President Putin and President Trump, the world has become a much safer place today! Historic! Epic!" wrote Dmitriev, the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a government investment agency, who has been negotiating with Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff. Dmitriev included small U.S. and Russian flags in his post on X as the discussion was underway.
Trump and Putin started talking at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino said More than two-and-a-half hours later, the White House said the call was over.
Ahead of the talks, White House officials had indicated they were ready to allow Russia to maintain control over the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine territory it holds, and also suggested that the control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, was also subject to discussion. Russia captured the facility in 2022.
Russia has consistently put forward maximalist demands that Ukraine views as unacceptable. In June, Putin said Russia would immediately stop hostilities if Ukraine surrenders four southeastern regions that Russian troops partly occupy and if it renounces plans to join NATO.
France and Britain have led the effort to create a "coalition of the willing" - countries that would help guarantee any agreement, including by putting troops inside Ukraine. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesman said Monday that more than 30 countries had joined the coalition. "This will be a significant force, with a significant number of countries providing troops and a larger group contributing in other ways," he said.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, stated ahead of the phone call that Russia would seek to prevent a ceasefire from being used to "pump the Ukrainian army with weapons" or to deploy peacekeepers from NATO countries.
"There are four main conditions for the duration of the truce," Markov said. "An arms embargo on Ukraine, a ban on mobilization, a prohibition on training Ukrainian soldiers at NATO bases in Europe, and no NATO troops entering Ukraine under any pretext."
But Russia has made even more demands that go far beyond Ukraine's borders, seeking to reinvent Europe's security architecture and reimpose the Kremlin's will on NATO members that were once part of the Communist bloc.
On Monday, a senior Russian diplomat, Alexander Grushko, said Moscow had its own security guarantees outlined in a list of demands presented in December 2021, a few months before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which at the time was dismissed as a nonstarter. The proposal included eight points, one of which called for NATO to roll back its presence in Europe to pre-1997 levels, before its eastward expansion.
That effort would effectively spell the end of the defense alliance in its post-Cold War incarnation, leaving eastern Europe with significantly watered-down security guarantees and vulnerable to Russian invasion.
Meanwhile, ordinary Russians and some businesses had placed hope in the unexpected warming of U.S.-Russia relations, as Russian officials speculated that some Western companies might resume operations. After the first round of talks with Russia in Riyadh, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that ending the war could unlock "potentially historic economic partnerships" and that the easing of sanctions could be incorporated into a broader peace agreement.
On Tuesday, the Russian ruble strengthened against the dollar, with the exchange rate dropping below 81 rubles for the first time since June 2023, according to Moscow Exchange data.