Trump suggests to Zelensky that the U.S. should take ownership of Ukrainian power plants for security
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KYIV, Ukraine — President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday that they had a constructive call about moving toward a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow, with the White House suggesting the U.S. could take control of Ukrainian power plants to ensure their security.
Trump told Zelensky that the United States could be “very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise,” according to a White House statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Michael Waltz.
Trump added that “American ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure.”
Weeks after a disastrous Oval Office meeting that led to Trump temporarily pausing intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump and Zelensky had “a very good conversation” in which they joked around, according to a senior Ukrainian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly. There was an emphasis on how any ceasefire process would need to be monitored and how the negotiating teams would need to resolve technical issues, the official said.
The White House described it as a first step toward to peace that it hopes will eventually include a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea and an end to the war.
During the call, Zelensky requested additional Patriot defense missile systems. Rubio and Waltz said Trump “agreed to work with him to find what was available, particularly in Europe.”
Trump has made clear that quickly ending the war is a top priority for his new administration. He has repeatedly complained about the cost — the U.S. has sent Ukraine more than $180 billion in military and economic aid since the start of the war.
The call came a day after Trump held talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who agreed not to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure but refused to back a full 30-day ceasefire.
According to the Kremlin, Putin made clear to Trump that there must be a halt to foreign military aid and intelligence sharing as part of any deal. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that U.S. “intelligence sharing in terms of defense for Ukraine” would continue.
The diplomatic effort coincided with a Russian claim that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of a key town in Russia’s Kursk border region.
The Kremlin says Kyiv isn’t upholding its end of the bargain
Before his call with Trump, Zelensky 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,” Zelensky said at a news conference in Helsinki with Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
Russia said 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 lasting end to the fighting.
But there was no indication that Putin backed away from his conditions for a peace deal, terms that Ukraine fiercely opposes.
Russia invaded Ukraine, but President Trump falsely claims Ukraine started the war. A look at the facts.
Russia is holding the ceasefire proposal ‘hostage’
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that Putin’s demands during the call with Trump would amount to “Ukrainian capitulation.”
“Putin is attempting to hold the temporary ceasefire proposal hostage in order to extract preemptive concessions ahead of formal negotiations to end the war,” the institute said in an analysis of readouts from the calls.
Stubb said that the discussions between Putin and Trump are a step in the right direction and that Russia needs to end its aggression.
“There are only two ways to respond to the proposal of the president of the United States: It’s a yes or a no. No buts, no conditions,” Stubb said. “Ukraine accepted a ceasefire without any forms of conditions. If Russia refuses to agree, we need to increase our efforts to strengthen Ukraine and ratchet up pressure on Russia to convince them to come to the negotiating table.”
Waltz said on social media that he and his Russian counterpart, Yuri Ushakov, agreed Wednesday that their teams would meet soon in Riyadh, 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 whether Ukrainian officials were invited.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says excluding his country from talks between the U.S. and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous.”
Ukraine and Russia trade accusations
Shortly after the 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, Zelensky said. Russian drones were reported over the regions of Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy.
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 illegally 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 U.S. 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.
Zelensky said that “words of a ceasefire” weren’t enough.
“If the Russians don’t hit our facilities, we definitely won’t hit theirs,” he said.
Meanwhile, the two combatants said Wednesday that they had each swapped 175 prisoners in one of the largest exchanges of the war.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Vladimir Putin met with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the American proposal for a cease-fire in the war with Ukraine.
Ukraine’s red line
Zelensky rejected Putin’s key condition that Western allies stop providing military aid and intelligence to Ukraine. He said that would endanger lives if civilians 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,” Zelensky 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.
Zelensky said territorial concessions would be one of the most difficult issues in negotiations.
“For us, the red line is the recognition of the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories as Russian,” he said. “We will not go for it.”
Arhirova writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Yehor Konovalov in Kyiv, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Aamer Madhani in Washington and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.
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