US President Donald Trump has held a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin after which he said there would be no “immediate peace” agreement with Ukraine.
“It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Mr Trump said on his Truth Social network.
Moscow said earlier today that military options were “on the table” for its response to the Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia and accused the West of being involved in them.
Russia also urged the US and Britain to restrain Kyiv after the attacks, which Ukrainian officials have lauded as showing Kyiv can still fight back after more than three years of war.
British and US officials have said they had no prior knowledge of the weekend attacks on Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers.
President Putin also discussed the war in Ukraine with Pope Leo in a telephone call today, claiming he wanted peace through diplomacy, the Kremlin said.
Mr Putin however also claimed “the regime in Kyiv is betting on an escalation of the conflict and carrying out of acts of sabotage against civil infrastructure on Russian territory,” it said in a statement.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed implementing a ceasefire until a meeting can be arranged with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“My proposal, which I believe our partners can support, is that we agree a ceasefire with the Russians until the leaders meet,” Mr Zelensky told a briefing in Kyiv.
“At this time, people will understand that the nations, Europe, Ukraine and the whole world have a chance to end the war,” he said, adding that monitoring of the ceasefire could be discussed at the meeting.
Mr Zelensky said Kyiv would “be grateful” for support for the idea from US President Donald Trump.
Russia has resisted Ukrainian and Western calls for a ceasefire, saying that certain conditions must first be met.
Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated Moscow’s stance that any ceasefire would simply be used by Ukraine to acquire more Western weapons. Mr Putin also questioned the point of peace talks after accusing Ukraine of ordering deadly attacks on bridges in Russia that killed seven and injured 115 more.
Mr Zelensky said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, which hosted peace talks yesterday, had expressed support for a top-level meeting of the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, the US and Turkey.
The 2 June talks in Istanbul made little progress towards ending the three-year-old war in Ukraine, though the sides exchanged proposals as well as a plan for another major swap of prisoners of war.
Mr Zelensky said the POW exchange would begin over the coming weekend.
“The Russian side has informed us that this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, it can return 500 people,” he said.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov has previously said the next exchange would focus on swapping the severely wounded and the young, as well as the bodies of dead soldiers.
Mr Zelensky said Ukraine had not received a Russian response to the document Kyiv shared ahead of Monday’s meeting in Istanbul and he characterised the Russian proposals as ultimatums.
He said that to continue peace talks in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia with the current rank of delegations was senseless.
“We are ready for exchanges, but to continue diplomatic meetings in Istanbul at a level that does not solve anything further, I think, is pointless,” he said.
Mr Zelensky said that Russia is only holding talks on ending the war to try to convince Mr Trump to delay fresh sanctions over its invasion.
Ukrainian refugees in Europe
The European Commission has proposed extending Ukrainian refugees’ right to stay in the EU for another year, while for the first time stating clearly that their special status will at some point end.
The commission said that the protections granted by the 27-nation bloc following Moscow’s February 2022 invasion, currently benefiting 4.3 million Ukrainians, should be rolled over until March 2027.
At the same time, it called for member states to begin “paving the way for a transition out of temporary protection once the necessary conditions are met”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the West was involved, both directly and indirectly, in Ukrainian “terrorist attacks” against civilian targets in Russia.
Western countries, NATO and “the collective West” supply weapons and provide coordinates for such attacks, Ms Zakharova said.
Mr Trump’s envoy to Ukraine has said the risk of escalation from the war in Ukraine was “going way up” after Ukrainian forces used drones to strike nuclear-capable bombers at several airbases deep inside Russia.
Ukraine said it attacked airfields in Siberia and Russia’s far north over the weekend, striking targets up to 4,300 km from the front lines of the conflict.
“I’m telling you, the risk levels are going way up – I mean, what happened this weekend,” Mr Trump’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News.
“People have to understand in the national security space: when you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. You’re not sure.”
Russia and the United States together hold about 88% of all nuclear weapons.
Each power has three main ways of attacking with nuclear warheads, known as the nuclear triad: strategic bombers, land-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Mr Kellogg said the damage to the Russian bombers at the weekend was less important than the psychological impact on Russia and that he was particularly concerned by unconfirmed reports of a Ukrainian attack on a naval base in northern Russia.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that Mr Trump had not been informed in advance of Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s bombers.
