Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hopes to speak with President Trump later Wednesday to “discuss the details of the next steps” after a call from the US leader with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
In a call with President Trump on Tuesday, the Kremlin said Putin agreed to a limited ceasefire to halt attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The proposal was short of the 30-day unconditional ceasefire that Kiev agreed to at Washington’s urging.
On Wednesday, Zelensky said he seemed open to the latest offers for a limited ceasefire, but that he thought that in such a ceasefire we needed to monitor our work.
“If the Russians don’t attack our facilities, we definitely won’t hit theirs,” Zelensky told a press conference in Helsinki along with Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb.
Emphasizing the lack of trust between Ukraine and Russia, the two countries on Wednesday accused of attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.
Zelensky has characterized some of the conditions Putin has set for a wider ceasefire, including a request for a complete halt of foreign military and intelligence reporting aid to Ukraine, as an attempt to halt for time, allowing Russia to improve its position of the troops on the battlefield and its negotiation hands.
The Ukrainian president repeated the point on Tuesday night of a call between Putin and Trump, saying it is clear that Russia is “not ready to end this war.”
“They aren’t even prepared to take the first step towards a ceasefire as they continue to impose additional conditions,” he said.
The 30-day ceasefire proposal, which Ukraine agreed after consultations with US Saudi Arabian officials, was even broader. It would have been applied to land, sky and seas, which was the first halt of hostilities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine over three years ago. Zelensky said the long ceasefire that month was intended to give time for more fulfilling negotiations on long-term peace.
Anastasia kuznietsova contributed the report.
