Donald Trump has offered to help broker an end to the war in Ukraine during a lengthy telephone call with Vladimir Putin, just days before the two leaders are due in the same room at a Nato summit in Turkey.
The call, which lasted close to 90 minutes, took place on Saturday – the US Independence Day holiday – and was confirmed afterwards by Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. He said the two presidents had discussed a settlement in Ukraine, with Trump’s forthcoming appearance at the Nato summit in Ankara on 7 and 8 July factored into the conversation. Trump, Ushakov said, had reaffirmed his readiness “to work towards a rapid end to the fighting,” while Putin said Russia was seeking a political and diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Putin also questioned the judgement of Trump’s Nato allies during the call, suggesting Kyiv and its European partners held a mistaken picture of the situation along the front line.
Zelensky said he, too, had spoken to Trump on Saturday. He described the call as “very good” and said the two men would pick up the conversation in person at the Nato summit. In the meantime, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are to travel to Moscow again in pursuit of a settlement, Ushakov said – their latest attempt after previous rounds of shuttle diplomacy stalled as Washington’s attention shifted to the conflict with Iran.
Yet the diplomatic gesture did little to alter events on the ground. Two days before the call, Russia had carried out one of its most intense bombardments of Kyiv since the invasion began, killing at least 30 people and injuring more than 90 in overnight missile and drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital, according to the Washington Post. More than 20 sites were struck, many of them residential, Euronews reported, and Kyiv’s Metro said its stations had sheltered 52,500 people overnight, including 4,500 children. The UK’s Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, condemned the attack, saying Russia had chosen “escalation over peace,” and pledged continued support for Ukraine’s air defences, Time reported.
The bombardment continued through the weekend. According to The Sun, at least one person was killed and 16 injured when Russian forces struck Zaporizhzhia, while further north, in the border region of Sumy, three women aged 19, 49 and 55 were hurt as Russian troops shelled 21 settlements overnight. It came a day after a separate strike on Sumy killed four people – including a five-year-old girl and her mother – and left a further 27 injured.
During the call, Putin gave what the Kremlin described as an upbeat account of the fighting, saying Russian forces were “confidently advancing, liberating one settlement after another.” He pointed to Kostiantynivka, a logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region that Russian commanders had told him was captured on Friday.
Kyiv disputes this. Zelensky and Ukraine’s General Staff say the city remains under Ukrainian control, with defensive operations continuing in and around it. In a social media post reported by Ukrainian outlet UNN, Zelensky accused Putin of lying to Trump on the eve of Independence Day, dismissing the claim as “just another Russian lie” invented to generate headlines, and said that if the city really had fallen, Putin would have little reason to avoid meeting him there in person.
The dispute comes as Russia grapples with fuel shortages caused by a sustained Ukrainian campaign against its oil industry. In late June, Zelensky authorised a 40-day operation of long-range strikes on Russian refineries and military sites, which Ukrainian officials say has already disabled more than 40 per cent of the country’s oil refining capacity. Ukraine also struck power substations in Crimea overnight into Sunday, leaving parts of the annexed peninsula in darkness, according to the Kyiv Independent, while Zelensky marked Ukrainian Navy Day by declaring that Russia had “lost the Black Sea.”
Despite the pressure, neither side has shifted from its central red line. Moscow continues to insist that any settlement must hand it full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region; Kyiv has said repeatedly it will not surrender the territory without a fight. Zelensky asked Putin last month for a one-to-one meeting to discuss ending the war; the request went unanswered.
Nato Summit: Key Discussions Ahead
Attention will now turn to Ankara, where leaders of Nato’s 32 member states gather from Tuesday for a summit expected to focus on sustaining military support for Ukraine alongside allied defence spending and industrial capacity. Both Trump and Zelensky are due to attend, alongside Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte.
