Trump offers to broker a Ukraine settlement in call with Putin
President Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin for nearly 90 minutes on July 5 and offered to help broker an end to the war in Ukraine, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said. Ushakov described the exchange as “businesslike and quite constructive” and said Trump “confirmed his readiness to work towards a rapid end to the fighting,” with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner prepared to travel to Moscow again.
Trump also spoke separately with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. The Ukrainian president said there was “a real prospect to end this war” and that continued American commitment would be decisive. Both calls pointed to an upcoming NATO summit in Ankara as the venue where the threads may be pulled together.
The diplomatic push comes with the roughly 1,200-km front line largely static: dense drone warfare has made it costly for either side to move armor, blunting Russia’s claimed advances and limiting Ukraine’s counter-moves. That stalemate is part of what gives a mediated settlement more room now than at earlier points in the war — though the Kremlin’s framing, emphasizing a “political-diplomatic resolution,” leaves unstated whether Moscow’s territorial demands have changed.