STORY:
:: February 12, 2025
:: Washington, D.C.
:: Trump says Putin and Zelenskiy both said they
want peace in separate phone calls with him
“We had a great call, and it lasted for a long time. Over an hour (eds note: refers to his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin). This morning I also had with President Zelenskiy a very good call after that. And I think we’re on the way to getting peace.
//CUT IN HERE MAYBE? “I think President Putin wants peace and President Zelenskiy wants peace. And I want peace. I just want to see people stop getting killed.”
“I think when the war ends, one thing he was very strong about he wants, if it ends, he wants it to end. And that’s President Putin said that he wants it to end. He doesn’t want to end it and then go back to fighting six months later. We talked about the possibility, I mentioned it, of a ceasefire so we can stop the killing. And I think we’ll probably end up at some point getting a ceasefire in the not too distant future.”
“We’ll get something done. We’re going to be meeting actually tomorrow they’re meeting in Munich, as you know, and we’re going to have some other meetings and we’ll be… I’ll be dealing with President Putin largely on the phone. And we ultimately expect to meet. In fact, we expect that he’ll come here and I’ll go there. And we’re going to meet also probably in Saudi Arabia the first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia, see if we can get something done. But we want to end that war. That war is a disaster. Really bloody, horrible war.”
The conversations came after Trump’s defense secretary earlier said Kyiv would have to give up its long-held goals of joining the NATO military alliance and regaining all of its territory seized by Russia, signaling a dramatic shift in Washington’s approach to the conflict.
After speaking with Putin for more than an hour, Trump said the Russian leader, who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, wants the war to end and they discussed “getting a ceasefire in the not-too-distant future.”
“He wants it to end. He doesn’t want to end it and then go back to fighting six months later,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“I think we’re on the way to getting peace. I think President Putin wants peace, President Zelenskiy wants peace and I want peace. I just want to see people stop getting killed,” he added.
Trump has long said he would quickly end the war in Ukraine, without spelling out exactly how he would accomplish this.
