The call was nearly an hour long, according to Kremlin officials. Alamy Stock Photo
Ukraine
During the call, Putin told Trump that Russia will not “give up” on its aims in Ukraine.
LAST UPDATE
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3 Jul
DONALD TRUMP SAID he had made no progress with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin towards a ceasefire in Ukraine after the two leaders spoke by phone today.
“No, I didn’t make any progress with him at all,” Trump told reporters when asked if he had moved closer to a deal to end Russia’s invasion, adding that he was “not happy” about the ongoing war.
It was their sixth publicly disclosed chat since Trump returned to the White House this year.
Putin told Trump that Moscow will not “give up” on its aims in Ukraine, while pledging it will also keep up a negotiating process on the conflict, the Kremlin said after the call.
“Our president said that Russia will achieve the aims it set, that is to say the root causes that led to the current state of affairs,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.
“Russia will not give up on these aims.”
“He also spoke of the readiness of the Russian side to continue the negotiation process,” Ushakov added, saying the call lasted almost an hour.
Their previous publicly known call came on 14 June, a day after Israel attacked Iran.
Ten days before that, they also spoke on the same topic, at which point Putin had offered to assist in the then-ongoing US nuclear talks with Tehran.
Their resumed contacts appeared to reflect both leaders’ interest in mending US-Russian ties that have plummeted to their lowest point since the Cold War amid the conflict in Ukraine.
Thursday’s call follows the Pentagon’s confirmation that it is pausing shipments of some weapons to Ukraine as it reviews global US military stockpiles.
The pause includes some shipments of Patriot missiles, precision-guided GMLRS, Hellfire missiles and Howitzer rounds, all of which are needed by Ukraine’s defense forces.
The details on the weapons in some of the paused deliveries were confirmed by a US official and former national security official familiar with the matter.
On Tuesday, Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron held their first direct telephone call in almost three years.
With reporting from Andrew Walsh
Michele Wiers
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