President Donald Trump said on March 16 that he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 18 to discuss a cease-fire deal to end the war in Ukraine.
“I’ll be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”
Trump said he foresees a “very good chance” of reaching a cease-fire deal with Russia. When asked about his expectations regarding Russia’s potential concessions in the peace deal, Trump said that discussions would involve land and power plants.
“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said. “I think we have a lot of it already discussed by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”
Ukraine has agreed to enter into a 30-day cease-fire with Russia following March 11 talks between Ukrainian and U.S. officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The United States has, in turn, resumed weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
“The two sides have, we’ve narrowed the differences between them, and now we’re sitting at the table,” the envoy said, adding that Trump had also been briefed about the meeting.
Witkoff said that the four regions partially occupied by Russian troops—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—are of “critical importance” in the discussions.
He stated that the U.S. government is in talks with officials from Ukraine and Russia, as well as European stakeholder countries including France, Britain, Norway, and Finland, about those regions and other elements “that would be encompassed in a cease-fire.”
Witkoff declined to disclose Russian terms for advancing the cease-fire deal.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said on March 17 that Moscow will seek guarantees that NATO will not accept Kyiv’s membership in the security alliance.
“We will demand that ironclad security guarantees become part of this agreement,” Grushko told Russian media outlet Izvestia. “Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of NATO countries to accept it into the alliance.”
“Those who want the war to end as soon as possible do not act this way. That is why we must jointly continue to put pressure on Russia to force an end to its aggression,” Zelenskyy stated on social media, urging the U.S. and European nations to take “decisive measures” against Russia.
Ukraine also launched drone attacks on Russian territory over the weekend. The Russian Defense Ministry said on March 16 that its air defense units destroyed 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.
Zelenskyy had previously insisted that any peace deal must include security guarantees to ensure Ukraine can defend itself against potential future Russian attacks.
Starmer made the remarks after a summit of “a coalition of the willing” that involved partners from Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
