russian leader

WASHINGTON — President Trump is hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House on Friday, with the U.S. leader signaling he’s not ready to agree to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.

Zelensky arrived with top aides to discuss the latest developments with Trump over lunch, a day after the U.S. president and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.

At the start of the talks, Zelensky congratulated Trump over landing last week’s ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza and said Trump now has “momentum” to stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“President Trump now has a big chance to finish this war,” Zelensky added.

In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the U.S.-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday’s call with Putin, Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles.

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can’t deplete our country.”

Zelensky had been seeking the weapons, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure. Zelensky has argued that the potential for such strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.

But Putin warned Trump during the call that supplying Kyiv with the Tomahawks “won’t change the situation on the battlefield, but would cause substantial damage to the relationship between our countries,” according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that talk of providing Tomahawks had already served a purpose by pushing Putin into talks. “The conclusion is that we need to continue with strong steps. Strength can truly create momentum for peace,” Sybiha said on the social platform X late Thursday.

Ukrainian officials have also indicated that Zelensky plans to appeal to Trump’s economic interests by aiming to discuss the possibility of energy deals with the U.S.

Zelensky is expected to offer to store American liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would allow for an American presence in the European energy market.

He previewed the strategy on Thursday in meetings with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the heads of American energy companies, leading him to post on X that it is important to restore Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after Russian attacks and expand “the presence of American businesses in Ukraine.”

It will be the fourth face-to-face meeting for Trump and Zelensky since the Republican returned to office in January, and their second in less than a month.

Trump announced following Thursday’s call with Putin that he would soon meet with the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ways to end the war. The two also agreed that their senior aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would meet next week at an unspecified location.

Fresh off brokering a ceasefire and hostage agreement between Israel and Hamas, Trump has said finding an endgame to the war in Ukraine is now his top foreign policy priority and has expressed new confidence about the prospects of getting it done.

Ahead of his call with Putin, Trump had shown signs of increased frustration with the Russian leader.

Last month, he announced that he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic shift from the U.S. leader’s repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions to end the war.

Trump, going back to his 2024 campaign, insisted he would quickly end the war, but his peace efforts appeared to stall following a diplomatic blitz in August, when he held a summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House meeting with Zelensky and European allies.

Trump emerged from those meetings certain he was on track to arranging direct talks between Zelensky and Putin. But the Russian leader hasn’t shown any interest in meeting with Zelensky and Moscow has only intensified its bombardment of Ukraine.

Trump, for his part, offered a notably more neutral tone about Ukraine following what he described a “very productive” call with Putin.

He also hinted that negotiations between Putin and Zelensky might be have to be conducted indirectly.

“They don’t get along too well those two,” Trump said. “So we may do something where we’re separate. Separate but equal.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

ANCHORAGE — President Trump is on his way to Alaska for a high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin, indicating he will take a tougher line with the Russian leader over a ceasefire in Ukraine after three brutal years of war.

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said Putin would face “economically severe” consequences if negotiations in Anchorage today fail to yield progress toward peace. He said that only Ukraine could decide whether to cede territory to Moscow. And he expressed support for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in any future peace agreement, so long as they fall short of NATO membership for the beleaguered nation.

“Yes, it would be very severe,” Trump said. “Very severe.”

Traveling from Moscow, Putin is bringing along several Russian business leaders, according to the Kremlin, a sign he hopes to begin discussions on normalizing relations with Washington. But Trump said he would not discuss business opportunities until the war is settled.

It’s a position that will relieve allies in Europe that have been hoping Trump would approach Putin with a firm hand, after months of applying pressure on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to prepare to make concessions to Moscow.

Zelensky was not invited to the Alaska negotiations. But Trump said he hoped his meeting on Friday would lead to direct talks “very shortly.”

Trump had said in recent days that a peace deal would include the “swapping” of land, a prospect roundly rejected in Kyiv. The Ukrainian constitution prohibits territorial concessions without the support of a public referendum.

“They’ll be discussed, but I’ve got to let Ukraine make that decision,” the president said of land swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I’m here to get them to the table.”

Trump will host Putin at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage later on Friday, the first meeting between a U.S. and Russian president since 2021.

Russian Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday that Putin’s war aims remain “unchanged.” And an aggressive Russian advance along the front lines this week provided evidence to military analysts that Moscow has no plans to implement a ceasefire.

The two leaders are expected to greet one another on the tarmac before meeting privately. Afterward, they will take an expanded lunch meeting with their aides, followed by a news conference, according to the White House.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him “very strongly” in a phone call Wednesday that he will respond to Ukraine’s weekend drone attack on Russian airfields as the deadlock over the war drags on and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismisses Russia’s ceasefire proposal.

The U.S. president said in a social media post that his lengthy call with Putin “was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.”

It’s the first time Trump has weighed in on Ukraine’s daring attack inside Russia. The U.S. did not have advance notice of the operation, according to the White House, a point the president emphasized during the call with the Russian leader, according to Putin’s foreign affairs advisor.

The U.S. has led a recent diplomatic push to stop the full-scale invasion, which began Feb. 24, 2022.

Trump, in his social media post, did not say how he reacted to Putin’s promise to respond to Ukraine’s attack, but his post showed none of the frustration that Trump has expressed with his Russian counterpart in recent weeks over his prolonging of the war.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs advisor, said at a briefing that the two leaders characterized the call as “positive and quite productive,” and reaffirmed their readiness to stay in touch.

“I believe it was useful for Trump to hear our assessments of what happened,” Ushakov said, noting that the discussion of the attacks was one of the key points in the conversation. He didn’t respond to a question about what the Russian response to the attacks could be.

Trump repeatedly promised to end the war quickly and even said he would accomplish it before he was sworn in. But he lost patience with Putin in recent weeks, publicly pleading with him to stop fighting and even said late last month that the Russian leader “has gone absolutely CRAZY.”

Trump, however, has not committed to backing a bipartisan push to sanction Putin.

The call was Trump’s first known talk with Putin since May 19. They also discussed, according to Trump and Ushakov, Iran’s nuclear program and the possibility of Russia engaging in talks with Tehran as the U.S. pushes the Islamic Republic to abandon its rapidly advancing nuclear program.

It was unclear whether Trump also planned to speak with Zelensky. The White House did not respond to a message Wednesday afternoon.

Zelensky brushes off Russian plan and pushes for talks

The Ukrainian leader earlier Wednesday dismissed Russia’s ceasefire plan as “an ultimatum” and renewed his call for direct talks with Putin to break the stalemate over the war, which has dragged on for nearly 3½ years.

Putin, however, showed no willingness to meet with Zelensky, expressing anger Wednesday about what he said were Ukraine’s recent “terrorist acts” on Russian rail lines in the Kursk and Bryansk regions on the countries’ border.

“How can any such [summit] meetings be conducted in such circumstances? What shall we talk about?” Putin asked in a video call with top Russian officials.

Putin accused Ukraine of seeking a truce only to replenish its stockpiles of Western arms, recruit more soldiers and prepare new attacks such as those in Kursk and Bryansk.

Both sides exchanged memorandums setting out their conditions for a ceasefire for discussion at Monday’s direct peace talks between delegations in Istanbul, their second meeting in just over two weeks. Zelensky had challenged Putin to meet him in Turkey, but the Kremlin leader stayed away.

Russia and Ukraine have established red lines that make a quick deal unlikely, despite a U.S.-led international diplomatic push to stop the fighting. The Kremlin’s Istanbul proposal contained a list of demands that Kyiv and its Western allies see as nonstarters.

‘This document looks like spam’

Zelensky said that the second round of talks in Istanbul was no different from the first meeting on May 16. Zelensky described the latest negotiations in Istanbul as “a political performance” and “artificial diplomacy” designed to stall for time, delay sanctions and convince the United States that Russia is engaged in dialogue.

“The same ultimatums they voiced back then — now they just put them on paper…. Honestly, this document looks like spam. It’s spam meant to flood us and create the impression that they’re doing something,” Zelensky said in his first reaction to the Russian document.

The Ukrainian leader said that he sees little value in continuing talks at the current level. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov led the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul, while Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin, headed the Russian team.

Zelensky said he wants a ceasefire with Russia before a possible summit meeting with Putin, possibly also including Trump, in an effort to remove obstacles to a peace settlement.

U.S. Defense secretary stays away

A second round of peace talks Monday between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul lasted just over an hour and made no progress on ending the war. They agreed only to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops.

A new prisoner exchange with Russia could take place over the weekend, Zelensky said.

In tandem with the talks, both sides have kept up offensive military actions along the roughly 620-mile front line and carried out deep strikes.

Ukraine’s Security Service gave more details Wednesday about its spectacular weekend drone strike on Russian air bases, which it claimed destroyed or damaged 41 Russian aircraft, including strategic bombers.

The agency released more video showing drones swooping under and over parked aircraft and featuring some planes burning. It also claimed the planes struck included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22, Tu-160, An-12, and Il-78 aircraft, adding that the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew the drone along a planned route in the event it lost signal.

The drones were not fully autonomous and a “human is still choosing what target to hit,” said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at Rand, a think tank.

Ukraine’s security agency said it also set off an explosion Tuesday on the seabed beneath the Kerch Bridge, a vital transport link between Russia and illegally annexed Crimea, claiming it caused damage to the structure.

But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that there was no damage.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its troops have taken control of another village in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region, on the border with Russia. Putin announced May 22 that Russian troops aim to create a buffer zone that might help prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks. Since then, Russia’s Defense Ministry claims its forces have taken control of nine Sumy villages.

Arhirova and Price write for the Associated Press. Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Chris Megerian in Washington, Emma Burrows in London and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.