Summary
- President Trump is speaking to Vladimir Putin
- The White House said the call began at 10 a.m. ET
- Leaders will discuss U.S. proposed 30-day truce
- Territory, future of nuclear plant on agenda
- Read our roundup here
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Japan June 28, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
As Trump and Putin talk, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts has put an unusual statement critical of the Trump administration's actions.
Roberts responded to Trump's attacks on a federal judge presiding over a deportation battle.
He is rejecting the idea that impeachment is the answer for a disagreement with the jurist's rulings.
"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," Roberts said in a statement issued by the court. "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."
Roberts' statement followed Trump's call on Tuesday for the impeachment of Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the administration on Saturday to halt the removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members, which Trump has argued is authorized by an 18th-century law historically used only in wartime.
Trump and Putin have been on the call for more than two hours now.
The two met multiple times during Trump's first term as president.
Here's a look back:
FILE PHOTO: Trump and Putin at the G20 in Hamburg, July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
FILE PHOTO: Trump and Putin at the APEC summit in Danang, November 10, 2017. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Trump meets Putin in Helsinki, July 16, 2018. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Trump and Putin among world leaders for Armistice Day in Paris, November 11, 2018. Francois Mori/Pool via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Putin and Trump during the G20 in Buenos Aires, November 30, 2018. REUTERSMarcos Brindicci
FILE PHOTO: Putin with Trump at the G20 in Osaka, June 28, 2019. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS
According to a discussion paper by the EU's diplomatic service seen by Reuters on Friday, the EU should be prepared to go as far as doubling its military aid to Ukraine this year to 40 billion euros ($43 billion) if necessary.
The paper said the EU gave about 20 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine last year and encourages EU countries to do at least the same again in 2025, with the total "potentially reaching" 40 billion euros, depending on Kyiv's needs.
FILE PHOTO: EU and Ukrainian flag outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, February 24, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Russia is preparing itself for a confrontation with European democracies as the United States shifts its focus towards the Indo-Pacific region, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.
"(Russia) has massively expanded its military-industrial production capacity... This investment fuels its war of aggression in Ukraine while preparing it for future confrontation with European democracies," she said, speaking at the Royal Danish Military Academy in Copenhagen.
While we're waiting for more from the Trump Putin call, here's a quick look back at the Russian leaders' meetings with his U.S. counterparts.
Putin has met with five sitting U.S. presidents since he became president of Russia in 2000.
BILL CLINTON
FILE PHOTO: Putin and Clinton in the Kremlin, June 3, 2000. REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev
Clinton visited Moscow for talks with Putin in June 2000. It was towards the end of the U.S. leader's time in office, but the start of what has turned out to be a marathon stint in power for the Russian leader.
Relations were strained at the time over the way in which Russia was prosecuting the second Chechen war, NATO air strikes against the then Yugoslavia the previous year, and U.S. plans for an anti-missile system.
GEORGE W. BUSH
FILE PHOTO: Bush and Putin at Brdo castle, Slovenia, June 16, 2001. REUTERS/Michael Leckel
Bush and Putin held their first summit in Slovenia in 2001. Bush told reporters after the talks: "We had a very good dialogue, and I was able to get a sense of his soul." Putin also thought it went well, calling the meeting open and trusting.
BARACK OBAMA
FILE PHOTO: Obama and Putin in the residence Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, July 7, 2009. REUTERS/RIA Novosti/Pool/Alexei Druzhinin
Putin in 2009 was prime minister, not president, but still regarded as Russia's paramount leader.
Obama held breakfast talks with Putin outside Moscow in July that year at one of Putin's residences.
Obama praised Putin’s achievements, attempting to mend fences as part of a "reset" with the U.S.'s Cold War enemy.
Putin declared himself satisfied with what he called substantive talks.
Then Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea, backed a separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine in 2014, and intervened in Syria in 2015 on the side of Bashar al-Assad.
The Putin-Obama relationship entered the deep freeze.
DONALD TRUMP
FILE PHOTO: Trump and Putin in Helsinki, Finland July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
A 2018 summit in Helsinki was marked by bonhomie. It sparked a storm of criticism in the United States after Trump refused to blame the Russian leader for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Trump later said he had misspoken and accused “some people” of hating the fact that he got along with Putin.
JOE BIDEN
FILE PHOTO: Putin and Biden in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Biden and Putin met in Geneva in 2021 amid strained relations.
They both used careful pleasantries to describe their talks. Putin called them constructive and without hostility. Biden said there was no substitute for face-to-face discussions.
The two leaders have been talking since about 10 a.m. ET (1400 GMT).
Russia's government has yet to comment on the ongoing call.
But before it started, the Kremlin said that Trump and Putin would discuss settling the conflict in Ukraine and normalizing relations between Russia and the United States and that they would speak "for as long as they deem necessary."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was already a "certain understanding" between the two leaders, based on a phone call they held on February 12 and on subsequent high-level contacts between the two countries.
"But there are also a large number of questions regarding the further normalization of our bilateral relations, and a settlement on Ukraine. All of this will have to be discussed by the two presidents," Peskov told reporters.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Wednesday, the Finnish President's office said.
After a welcoming ceremony in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, the two will hold formal talks on Finland’s support for Ukraine, Stubb's office added.
"At the end of the discussions, the Presidents will hold a joint press conference," a press release from the president's office said.
Finland's defense ministry announced last week it would give a new military aid package to Ukraine, worth around 200 million euros ($217.48 million), including artillery ammunition to help in the war with Russia
White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino posted on X:
As we wait to hear more on the Trump Putin call, here is a reminder of the framework mineral deal the U.S. and Ukraine tentatively agreed last month.
The deal, which is yet to be signed, would see the U.S. tap Ukraine's natural resources.
Titled "BILATERAL AGREEMENT ESTABLISHING TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR A RECONSTRUCTION INVESTMENT FUND," it lays out some details:
A social media account for Russia Today, the English language Russian news service, joked on X on Tuesday about Trump's eagerness for a call.
Putin was speaking earlier at a Moscow business forum.
"Putin's speech at the conference lasted only 42 minutes, compared to 2.5 hours last year. Perhaps someone keeps relentlessly calling?" the post said, above a split-screen photo of Putin behind a podium on the left and Trump at the Oval Office desk with a phone to his ear on the right.
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome, Italy, March 17, 2025. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
A plan spearheaded by Britain and France to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia is likely to prove ineffective, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told parliament on Tuesday.
Britain said on Monday a "significant number" of countries were willing to join the project, but Meloni ruled out any Italian involvement.
She reiterated that a better solution would be to extend NATO's mutual defence umbrella to Ukraine without offering it alliance membership.
We discuss Trump and Putin's planned call in Tuesday's Reuters World News podcast.
Follow on Apple or Spotify. Listen on the Reuters app.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a prolific social media user and has relied on Twitter, now X, Instagram and other accounts to rally global support for Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion.
But Zelenskiy has been quiet on social media as the call between Trump and Putin is expected to start this morning.
His last post on X, about 17 hours ago, seems to indirectly refer to the call and directly criticizes Putin, but does not mention Trump by name:
On Facebook and Instagram, Zelenskiy's most recent posts were about visiting Lviv and honoring Ukrainians killed in the war.
One of the key negotiation points in any future peace deal will be Europe’s largest nuclear plant.
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of risking an accident at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia facility in Ukraine with their actions.
Europe's largest with six reactors, the power station was seized by Russian forces in the early days of Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
It produces no electricity at the moment.
Power lines to the Zaporizhzia plant have been cut on several occasions, increasing the chance of a blackout that could cause a nuclear accident.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has stationed monitors permanently at the plant and urged both sides to refrain from all attacks on it.
The plant plays into a larger shift in Ukraine’s energy policy away from Russia and toward the European Union.
After the invasion, Ukraine said it would disconnect its power grid from former soviet states, connecting it to the EU.
In July 2022, Ukraine began exporting electricity to the EU via Romania. Zelenskiy said this was the start of a process that could help its European allies further reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas.
The location of the plant on the Dnipro River and just 200 km (125 miles) from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, also makes it a strategic target for Russian interests in the region.
Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Pool
Western companies that left Russia will not be allowed to return for small amounts of money or into niches that local businesses have successfully filled, Putin said on Tuesday.
Putin said he had asked the government to keep an eye on Western companies that might have buyback deals and to ensure that every case is carefully considered.
The Russia leader was speaking at a business event in Moscow ahead of his scheduled call with Trump.
Putin also told Russian business leaders not to count on fully free trade or movement of capital being restored in the event of Western sanctions on Russia being eased.
"Our competitors will always want to weaken and contain us," Putin told a meeting with Russian businessmen.
"Even if one side will make a gesture and offer to lift or ease something another method of causing problems for us will be found immediately."
Trump faces a tough negotiator in Putin, who Ukraine's Zelenskiy has argued does not abide by agreements.
"There's a danger that he will try to basically create more noise in this conversation with President Trump, pretending to agree on something while at the same time demanding more and more concessions on the Ukrainian side," said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy research organization.
"The worst case scenario is that Putin is successful selling some sort of promising lucrative future deal with Russia to Trump," she said.
The Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, is at the centre of the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War.
HISTORY
Crimea juts out into the Black Sea off southern Ukraine.
It was absorbed into the Russian empire along with most ethnic Ukrainian territory by Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
More than half a million people were killed in the Crimean War of 1853-56 when competing geopolitical powers Russia and the Ottoman Empire, backed by Britain and France, took up arms.
In 1921, the peninsula, then populated mainly by Muslim Tatars, became part of the Soviet Union.
The Tatars were deported en masse by Soviet leader Josef Stalin at the end of World War Two for alleged collaboration with the Nazis.
Crimea became part of Russia within the Soviet Union until 1954, when it was handed to Ukraine, also then a Soviet Republic, by Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian.
FILE PHOTO: A mural depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Simferopol, Crimea, March 12, 2024. The mural reads: "Crimea is our common heritage." REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak
RUSSIAN SEIZURE OF CRIMEA
Russia sent forces into Crimea and seized control of the peninsula after Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted during mass protests in February 2014.
After Crimea voted in a disputed referendum to become part of Russia, Russia formally annexed Crimea on March 18, 2014, with Putin saying Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia.
MILITARY SIGNIFICANCE
Russia's Black Sea base in Sevastopol, which was leased from Ukraine, gives Moscow access to the Mediterranean. Russia has frequently used Crimea as a launchpad for missile and drone attacks on Ukraine.
GEOGRAPHY
The mountainous peninsula is attached to the rest of Ukraine by a narrow strip of land in the north. To the east, it is separated from Russia by the narrow Kerch Strait. A bridge built by Russia across the strait has been damaged during the war.
With an area of 27,000 sq km (10,000 sq miles), Crimea is slightly smaller than Belgium, with the city of Simferopol as its capital.
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Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza and killed more than 400 people, Palestinian health authorities said on Tuesday, in an onslaught across the enclave that ended weeks of relative calm after talks to secure a permanent ceasefire stalled.