US president Donald Trump has seemingly given his clearest sign that he is willing to wash his hands of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after reportedly telling Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders they would have to find a solution themselves.
Trump reportedly gave the signal following his two-hour call with Russian despot Vladimir Putin, during which he heralded ‘impressive’ prospects for ties with Russia.
This came just days after he told reporters that only he and Putin had the power to end the conflict.
And according to the New York Times, Trump told Zelensky and other European leaders that he was also planning to backtrack on his own threats to join the EU in placing additional sanctions on Russia.
This came after months of Trump frequently threatening to place sanctions and tariffs on Russia if it refused to join Ukraine in announcing an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
He wrote on Truth Social earlier this month: ‘If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions.’
But this ferocity has seemingly vanished, and European partners have begun to notice.
Several EU officials told the newspaper that they understood not to expect any additional financial pressure to be applied to Putin by the US under Trump.
US president Donald Trump has seemingly given his clearest sign that he is willing to wash his hands of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a maeeting with the Crown Prince of Norway in Kyiv
A view of the destruction after a Russian shelling on the private sector in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on May 20, 2025
Firefighters extinguish a van fire following a Lancet drone strike at a roadside cafe in Raihorodka, Lyman District, Ukraine
Just one day after the call, the EU announced its 17th package of sanctions against Russia.
While the UK joined the efforts to apply monetary pressure on Putin’s nation, Trump was nowhere to be found.
It comes after Russia and Ukraine have scheduled no further direct talks on ending their more than three-year war, the Kremlin said today, almost a week after the first face-to-face engagement between their delegations since 2022, and days after Trump announced they would start ceasefire negotiations ‘immediately.’
‘There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. ‘They are yet to be agreed upon.’
During two hours of talks in Istanbul last Friday, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, in what would be their biggest such swap. Apart from that step, the meeting delivered no significant breakthrough.
Several months of intensified US and European pressure on the two sides to accept a ceasefire and negotiate a settlement have yielded little progress. Meanwhile, Russia is readying a summer offensive to capture more Ukrainian land, Ukrainian government and military analysts say.
Putin said earlier this week that Moscow would ‘propose and is ready to work with’ Ukraine on a ‘memorandum’ outlining the framework for ‘a possible future peace treaty.’ Putin has effectively rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has accepted.
He has linked the possibility to a halt in Ukraine’s mobilization effort and a freeze on Western arms shipments to Kyiv as part of a comprehensive settlement.
View of a damaged residential area following a Russian missile attack in Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, May 19, 2025
The Russian attack caused significant damage to the building and houses in the area
The major prisoner swap is ‘quite [a] laborious process’ that ‘requires some time,’ Peskov said.
But he added: ‘The work is continuing at a quick pace, everybody is interested in doing it quickly.’
Peskov told Russian news agency Interfax that Moscow had provided Kyiv with a list of prisoners it wants released in the swap. ‘We have not yet received a counter list from Kyiv. We are waiting,’ he told Interfax.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that preparations are underway for the potential prisoner exchange, which he described as ‘perhaps the only real result’ of the talks in Turkey.
Peskov disputed a report on Thursday in the Wall Street Journal that Trump told European leaders after his phone call with Putin on Monday that the Russian leader wasn’t interested in talks because he thinks that Russia is winning.
‘We know what Trump told Putin, we don’t know what Trump told the Europeans. We know President Trump’s official statement,’ Peskov said. ‘What we know contrasts with what was written in the article you mentioned.’
