Trump and Putin began laying the groundwork for a ceasefire in Ukraine as Russia agreed not to attack energy targets

Trump said late Monday that he looked forward to the call with Putin in a post on Truth Social, adding that “many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains.”

While the White House readout didn’t include specific details of what a permanent ceasefire would entail, the call most likely involved a discussion of what Ukraine will have to give up to achieve a pause after three years of fighting since Putin ordered his troops to invade Russia’s neighbor.

Trump, who has been trying to win Putin’s support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine accepted last week, said late Sunday that discussions with Putin would involve “dividing up certain assets” that included land and power plants.

The president has intimated that the Zaporizhzhia power plant, Europe’s biggest nuclear facility, as well as land — Ukraine controls part of the Russian region of Kursk, while Russia holds several regions of Ukraine — will be up for discussion.

He told reporters in Washington on Monday that Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region were “in deep trouble,” according to Reuters, adding that his administration’s temporary suspension of military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv was an attempt to “get Ukraine to do the right thing.”

Putin has repeatedly indicated that Russia wants to cement his country’s land grabs during the war and stop Kyiv from ever joining NATO. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told ABC News on Sunday that the prospect of a pathway into NATO for Ukraine was “incredibly unlikely.”

Zelenskyy has previously stated that he would be willing to resign in exchange for peace or NATO membership, which he sees as imperative for Ukrainian security.

Before the call, Keir Giles, a fellow with the London-based think tank Chatham House, told NBC News that the discussion between the two leaders would “primarily be about meeting additional demands from Putin at the expense of Ukraine.”

Referring to Trump’s comments over the division of assets, Giles said the call was “the classic Russian principle of demanding somebody else’s cake and then settling for only half of it, with those demands being enforced by an outside third party.”

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