President Trump was speaking with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss next steps after the American leader’s discussion with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
The phone call began at 10 a.m. and was still underway nearly an hour later, according to a social media post by Dan Scavino, a senior White House aide to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Zelensky had said he expected Mr. Trump to brief him on the American president’s conversation a day earlier with Mr. Putin, in which the Russian leader agreed to a limited cease-fire. That proposal, which would halt attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, fell short of a 30-day unconditional truce that Kyiv had agreed to at Washington’s urging.
On Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky appeared open to the latest offer of a limited cease-fire, but said he thought that such a truce would need U.S. monitoring to work.
“Just the assertion and the word of Putin that he will not strike energy sites is too little,” Mr. Zelensky said. “War has made us practical people.”
Ukraine would prepare a list of sites that would need to be protected — and if monitoring confirmed that “Russia doesn’t strike our objects, we will not strike theirs,” he told a news conference in Helsinki alongside Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb.
Underscoring the lack of trust between Ukraine and Russia, the two countries traded accusations on Wednesday about attacks against each others’ energy infrastructure.
Mr. Zelensky has characterized some of the conditions Mr. Putin has set for a broader cease-fire — such as a demand for a complete cessation of foreign military and intelligence aid to Ukraine — as an attempt to stall for time so that Russia can improve its forces’ positions on the battlefield and its negotiating hand.
The Ukrainian president reiterated that point after the call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump, saying that in setting conditions, Russia had made clear it was unwilling to end the war.
Ukraine’s European allies have cautiously welcomed any moves toward a cease-fire, while pledging further support for Kyiv and echoing concerns about Russia’s conditions.
“It’s a yes or a no. No buts, no conditions,” Mr. Stubb, Finland’s president, told the news conference. “Ukraine accepted a cease-fire without any form of conditions. If Russia refuses to agree, we need to increase our efforts to strengthen Ukraine and to ratchet up pressure on Russia.”
The 30-day cease-fire proposal that Ukraine had agreed to after talks with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia was more extensive. It would have applied to land, air and sea — the first cessation of hostilities since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago. That monthlong truce, Mr. Zelensky has said, was meant to give time for fuller negotiations about a longer-term peace.
On Wednesday, he reiterated that Ukraine would have “red lines” going into any such talks.
“For us, a red line is the recognition of Ukraine’s temporarily occupied territories as Russian,” he said. “We will not agree to that.”
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