Trump says he has spoken to Putin about ending Ukraine war
US President Donald Trump said that he has talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine, the New York Post reported late on Saturday.
In an interview aboard Air Force One on Friday Trump said that he had “better not say,” when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken.
“He (Putin) wants to see people stop dying,” Trump told the New York Post.
Neither the Kremlin nor the White House immediately responded to Reuters’ request for comment outside business hours.
In late January, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Putin is ready to hold a phone call with Trump and Moscow is waiting for word from Washington that it is ready too.
On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy next week to discuss the end of the war.
The war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, will mark its third anniversary on Feb. 24. Thousands of people, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed during the conflict.
‘Good relationship’
Trump told the New York Post that he has “always had a good relationship with Putin” and that he has a concrete plan to end the war. But he did not disclose further details.
“I hope it’s fast,” Trump said. “Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”
On Sunday, Russian state news agency TASS reported that Russian troops had taken control of the settlement of Orikhovo-Vasylivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, citing the Defense Ministry.
Reuters could not independently confirm the battlefield report.
The report came after Ukrainian President Zelenskyy confirmed that his forces had begun a new offensive in Russia’s Kursk region, where North Korean troops were fighting alongside Russian forces.
“In the areas of the Kursk operation, new assaults have taken place,” Zelenskyy said during his Friday address, adding, “Russia has once again deployed North Korean soldiers alongside its troops.”
Loses in hundreds
According to Zelenskyy, a “significant number” of enemy troops were destroyed. He gave no details but said the losses were in the hundreds.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that it had repelled a Ukrainian counterattack in the Kursk region.
Russia said Friday its forces had captured the mining town of Toretsk in their latest breakthrough in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, where Ukrainian defenses are creaking. Ukrainian officials did not confirm the report.
South Korea’s military said last month that it suspected North Korea was preparing to send additional troops to Russia after its soldiers suffered heavy casualties. North Korea has been supplying a vast amount of artillery and other conventional weapons to Russia, and last October it sent about 10,000 to 12,000 troops as well, according to US, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence.
Meanwhile, one person was killed and 10 wounded on Saturday in a Ukrainian strike on the city of Makiivka, a town in Ukraine’s partially occupied eastern Donetsk region, Moscow-installed officials said.
