Trump Says He Will Discuss Cease-Fire With Putin on Tuesday

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss a cease-fire deal that will end the war in Ukraine.

“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”

Trump said he foresees a “very good chance” of reaching a cease-fire deal with Russia. When asked about his expectations regarding Russia’s potential concessions in the peace deal, Trump said that discussions would involve land and power plants.

“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said. “I think we have a lot of it already discussed by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

Ukraine has agreed to enter into a 30-day cease-fire with Russia following March 11 talks between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The United States has, in turn, resumed weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

Putin has expressed support for the cease-fire efforts in principle but insisted that remaining concerns must be resolved before Russia could agree to halt the invasion.

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U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in Russia on March 14 to discuss cease-fire terms. In a Sunday interview with CNN, Witkoff said he had a positive and “solution-based discussion” with the Russian leader.

“The two sides have, we’ve narrowed the differences between them, and now we’re sitting at the table,” the envoy said, adding that Trump had also been briefed about the meeting.

Witkoff said that the four regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—partially occupied by Russian troops are of “critical importance” in the discussions.

He stated that the U.S. government is in talks with officials from Ukraine and Russia, as well as European stakeholder countries including France, Britain, Norway, and Finland, about those regions and other elements “that would be encompassed in a cease-fire.”

Witkoff declined to disclose Russian terms for advancing the cease-fire deal.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said on Monday that Moscow will seek guarantees that NATO will not accept Kyiv’s membership in the security alliance.

“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia. “Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance.”

Russian attacks against Ukraine have intensified as U.S.-led cease-fire talks continue. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had fired over 1,000 drone attacks, 1,360 guided aerial bombs, and more than 10 missiles of various types on several Ukrainian cities and communities in the past week.

“Those who want the war to end as soon as possible do not act this way. That is why we must jointly continue to put pressure on Russia to force an end to its aggression,” Zelenskyy stated on social media, urging the U.S. and European nations to take “decisive measures” against Russia.

Ukraine also launched drone attacks on Russian territory over the weekend. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Sunday that its air defense units destroyed 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.

Zelenskyy had previously insisted that any peace deal must include security guarantees to ensure Ukraine can defend itself against potential future Russian attacks.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on March 15 that military leaders of Western allies, other than the United States, will meet in the United Kingdom this week to put in place “robust plans” for protecting Ukraine in the event of a cease-fire with Russia.

Starmer made the remarks after a summit with “a coalition of the willing,” which involved partners from Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Reuters contributed to this report.