Putin and Trump will speak on Tuesday about war in Ukraine

U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (U.S. time). This call is seen as a potential turning point in ending the war in Ukraine, as well as an opportunity for Trump to continue adjusting U.S. foreign policy.

Trump revealed the upcoming call to reporters while aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening (Monday, Australian Eastern Daylight Time) en route from Florida to Washington. The Kremlin also confirmed on Monday morning (Monday evening, Australian Eastern Daylight Time) that Putin would participate in the call.

Trump stated, "We'll see if we can announce something on Tuesday. I'll be talking to President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work was done over this past weekend, and we'll see if we can end this war."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the planned call between the two leaders on Tuesday morning but declined to provide further details, stating, "We never get ahead of things" and "the content of conversations between the two presidents should not be discussed in advance."

European allies are concerned about Trump's closeness to Putin and his tough stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy received harsh criticism when he visited the Oval Office just over two weeks ago. Despite Russia's initial goals in invading Ukraine three years ago not being achieved, it still controls large swathes of the country.

Trump indicated that land and power plants are part of the negotiations to end the war. He claimed, "We're going to be discussing land, we're going to be discussing power plants," describing the process as "dividing up certain assets." Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, recently visited Moscow to advance the negotiations.

After its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia illegally annexed four Ukrainian regions—the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in the country's southeast—but does not fully control any of the four. Last year, Putin listed the withdrawal of Kyiv's forces from all four regions as one of the conditions for peace. In 2014, the Kremlin also annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

In the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, Moscow controls the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—Europe's largest nuclear power plant. Since the invasion, the plant has been caught in the crossfire on multiple occasions. The UN agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has frequently expressed concern about the plant, fearing a possible nuclear disaster.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said that despite recent stock market volatility and nervousness about the economic impact, he will move forward with the planned imposition of tariffs on April 2. He said, "April 2nd is going to be a day of liberation for our country. We're going to be taking back some of the wealth that very stupid presidents gave away for free because they didn't have a clue what they were doing."

Trump occasionally changes some tariff plans, such as those for Mexico, but he said he has no intention of doing so in terms of reciprocal tariffs. "They charge us, we charge them," he said. "Beyond that, we're going to be putting on some additional tariffs with respect to cars and with respect to steel and aluminum."