Trump and Zelenskyy Wrap up Call a Day after Talks with Russia about Possible Ceasefire

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks on, during a joint press conference with Finland's President Alexander Stubb, at the Presidential Palace, in Helsinki, Finland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks on, during a joint press conference with Finland's President Alexander Stubb, at the Presidential Palace, in Helsinki, Finland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP)
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Trump and Zelenskyy Wrap up Call a Day after Talks with Russia about Possible Ceasefire

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks on, during a joint press conference with Finland's President Alexander Stubb, at the Presidential Palace, in Helsinki, Finland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks on, during a joint press conference with Finland's President Alexander Stubb, at the Presidential Palace, in Helsinki, Finland, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva via AP)

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed the path to a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow on Wednesday, a day after the US leader held similar talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trump's call with Zelenskyy was about half the length of his call Tuesday, during which Putin agreed not to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure but refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire.

In a social media post, Trump said his call with Zelenskyy was to “align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs” as he seeks to bring a halt to fighting.

“We are very much on track,” Trump added, saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz would provide further details of the conversation.

Prior to his call with Trump, Zelenskyy said Putin’s limited ceasefire pledge was “very much at odds with reality” following an overnight barrage of drone strikes across the country.

“Even last night, after Putin’s conversation with ... Trump, when Putin said that he was allegedly giving orders to stop strikes on Ukrainian energy, there were 150 drones launched overnight, including on energy facilities,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Helsinki with Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

The Kremlin says Kyiv isn't upholding its end of the bargain Russia responded by saying it had halted its targeting of Ukraine's energy facilities and accused Kyiv of attacking equipment near one of its pipelines.

“Unfortunately, we see that for now there is no reciprocity on the part of the Kyiv regime," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The White House described the call between Trump and Putin as the first step in a “movement to peace” that Washington hopes will include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and eventually a full and lasting end to the fighting.

But there was no indication that Putin backed away from his conditions for a prospective peace deal, which are fiercely opposed by Kyiv.

White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said on social media that he and his Russian counterpart, Yuri Ushakov, agreed Wednesday that their teams would meet soon in Saudi Arabia, “to focus on implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire President Trump secured from Russia.”

It was not immediately clear who would be part of the delegations or if Ukrainian officials were also invited to take part in the Saudi Arabia talks.

Ukraine and Russia trade accusations

Shortly after the lengthy phone call between Trump and Putin on Tuesday, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv, followed by explosions as residents took shelter.

Despite efforts to repel the attack, several strikes hit civilian infrastructure, including two hospitals, a railway and more than 20 houses, Zelenskyy said. Russian drones were reported over Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Cherkasy regions.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its military had launched seven drones at power facilities related to the military-industrial complex in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, but that it shot them down after receiving Putin’s order to not hit energy infrastructure.

Moscow accused Ukraine of targeting its energy facility in the Krasnodar region bordering the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, several hours after the Putin and Trump talks. The ministry said that three drones targeted oil transfer equipment that feeds the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, causing a fire and leading one oil tank to lose pressure.

“It is absolutely clear that we are talking about yet another provocation deliberately concocted by the Kyiv regime, aimed at derailing the peace initiatives of the US president,” the ministry said.

Russia said that its air defenses intercepted 57 Ukrainian drones over the Azov Sea and several Russian regions — the border provinces of Kursk and Bryansk and the nearby regions of Oryol and Tula.

Zelenskyy said that “words of a ceasefire” weren't enough.

“If the Russians don’t hit our facilities, we definitely won’t hit theirs,” Zelenskyy said.

Meanwhile, the two combatants said Wednesday that they had each swapped 175 prisoners in one of the largest exchanges of the war.

Ukraine's red line Zelenskyy rejected Putin’s key condition that Western allies stop providing military aid and intelligence to Ukraine. He said that doing so would endanger lives if citizens were blind to incoming air raids, and lead to the continuation of the war.

“I don’t think anybody should make any concessions in terms of helping Ukraine, but rather, assistance to Ukraine should be increased,” Zelenskyy said. “This will be a signal that Ukraine is ready for any surprises from the Russians.”

Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that it was “completely unsurprising” that Putin rejected the ceasefire, adding that it’s “imprudent for him to tell President Trump that directly, since Trump has made ending the war a very, very high priority.”

“What we have now, in effect, is a competition or rivalry between Kyiv and Moscow to persuade Trump that it’s the other side that is responsible for preventing Trump from achieving his goal of ending the war,” Gould-Davies said.

Zelenskyy said that one of the most difficult issues in future negotiations would be the issue of territorial concessions.

“For us, the red line is the recognition of the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories as Russian,” he said. “We will not go for it.”



Ukrainian Official Says Major Prisoner Swap with Russia is Underway

Family members of Ukrainian prisoners hold banners and photos of servicemen in captivity ahead of an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, in Chernyhiv region, Ukraine, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Family members of Ukrainian prisoners hold banners and photos of servicemen in captivity ahead of an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, in Chernyhiv region, Ukraine, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
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Ukrainian Official Says Major Prisoner Swap with Russia is Underway

Family members of Ukrainian prisoners hold banners and photos of servicemen in captivity ahead of an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, in Chernyhiv region, Ukraine, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Family members of Ukrainian prisoners hold banners and photos of servicemen in captivity ahead of an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, in Chernyhiv region, Ukraine, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

An exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine from their 3-year-old war was underway Friday, a senior Ukrainian official said, in one of the few signs of progress in international efforts to halt the fighting.

The swap was not yet finished, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Moscow did not immediately confirm the exchange was underway.

Ukraine and Russia agreed to the exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each side a week ago in Turkey in their first direct peace talks since the early weeks of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of its neighbor. That meeting lasted only two hours and brought no breakthrough in international diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting, The AP news reported.

The Ukrainian comment Friday came after US President Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine had carried out a large exchange of prisoners.

“A major prisoners swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump said on the Truth Social platform. He said it would “go into effect shortly,” although it was not clear what that meant.

“This could lead to something big???” Trump added in his post, apparently referring to international diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting.

White House and National Security Council officials did not immediately respond to requests for further details.

After the May 16 talks, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called the prisoner swap a “confidence-building measure” and said the parties had agreed in principle to meet again.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that there has been no agreement yet on the venue for the next round of talks as diplomatic maneuvering continued.

European leaders have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he tries to press his larger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.

The Istanbul meeting revealed both sides clearly remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting. One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement.

The Kremlin has pushed back on a temporary halt to hostilities, and Putin has said any such truce must come with a freeze on Western arms supplies to Ukraine and an end to Ukraine’s mobilization drive.

A senior Ukrainian official said that in Istanbul, Russia had introduced new, “unacceptable demands” to withdraw Ukrainian forces from huge swaths of territory. The official, who was not authorized to make official statements, spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. The proposal had not been previously discussed, the official said.

Putin has long demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully occupied as a key condition for a peace deal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that if Russia continues to reject a ceasefire and make “unrealistic demands,” it will signal deliberate efforts to prolong the war — a move that should bring tougher international sanctions.