Trump gets PR win, but Putin concedes little in 30-day ceasefire phone call

Trump gets PR win, but Putin concedes little in 30-day ceasefire phone call
Putin and Trump held a 1.5-hour phone call where Trump got a PR win but Putin gave almost nothing of substance away. / bne IntelliNews
By Ben Aris in Berlin March 19, 2025

US President Donald Trump gained a PR win after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to pause attacks on Ukraine’s energy assets in a two-hour phone call on March 18, but Russia gave away little in a victory for the Kremlin.

The two presidents agreed that Russia would halt targeting Ukraine’s energy assets in a 30-day ceasefire, but Russia continued to fire missiles and drones at Ukraine while the two men were speaking in a closely watched conversation.

Putin’s concession was a lot less than a commitment to a total ceasefire, already accepted by Ukraine “on land and sea”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy labelled the talks a failure, repeating earlier claims that “Putin does not want peace.” Zelenskiy said the call shows that Moscow has no interest in ending the war.

“They are not even ready for the first step: a full ceasefire,” Zelenskiy said in a video post. "Today, Putin de facto rejected the proposal for a complete ceasefire. It would be right for the world to reject in response any attempts by Putin to drag out the war."

However, Zelenskiy said after the call that he would support the limited ceasefire proposal put forward by Putin, although he was “waiting for more details.”

By promising not to attack Ukraine’s energy facilities, Putin gave away almost nothing. However, by agreeing to a 30-day pause in these attacks he gave Trump a proforma PR win that the US president needs to sell to the US public as part of his “Greatest Dealmaker in the World” persona that is central to his hold on domestic politics.

“Putin’s call with Trump today was classic KGB rope-a-dope. Giving Trump a non-answer to his ceasefire proposal as Putin promises endless talks and negotiations without any intention of settling anything,” said anti-Kremlin activist and former Russia fund manager, Bill Browder.

And by giving away concessions to Russia – the White House conceded two (land and Nato) of the four main points on the agenda in the run up to the start of negotiations – Trump is also ignoring US popular opinion which is largely in favour of continuing support for Ukraine. A Gallup poll this week found 46% of Americans believe the US isn't doing enough to support Ukraine – the highest level since the topic was first polled in August 2022.

Analysts widely agree that the window of opportunity Putin has for doing a deal with Trump is small and likely to close quickly if Putin insists on drawn out negotiations focused on the details of his maximalist demands. Trump has made it very clear that he wants to get out of Ukraine as quickly as possible and has also threatened Putin with “sanctions from hell” should Putin prove to be uncooperative.

As bne IntelliNews reported, going into the phone call, Putin had little choice but to concede some sort of agreement to the 30-day ceasefire, but what he actually agreed to was the minimum needed to hand Trump his necessary PR win and score a victory for himself, as it contains so little in the way of actual concessions.

Putin also agreed to a POW swap of 175 prisoners that will take place on March 20, but gave away little else.

In a shock revelation, Trump also admitted that this was not only his second conversation with Putin since he took office in January, but he has talked to Putin “multiple times” by phone since his inauguration, the Washington Examiner reports. The admission will only fuel more speculation that Trump is a lot closer to Putin than he cares to admit and underscores Trump’s transactional approach to relations with Russia.

The Kremlin was ebullient at the result of the talks, which it clearly sees as a victory. Former president and now Deputy chair of the Security Council Dmitry Mednedev gloated on social media: “The phone call between Presidents Putin and Trump proved a well-known idea – there is only Russia and America in the dining room. On the menu: light appetisers – Brussels sprouts, British fish and chips and Paris rooster. The main course is a Kyiv-style cutlet. Enjoy your meal!”

Zelenskiy responded, saying Ukraine doesn’t want to be on anyone’s menu.

"I don't want to offend anyone, but I don't want us to be on Putin's menu," Zelenskiy said. "We are not a salad ... We are an independent state. Without us, I think it's wrong to negotiate."

Energy targeted

Putin’s offer to stop targeting energy assets is a minor concession. After the US ran out of money for Ukraine at the start of 2024 the latter quickly ran out of air defence missiles and was left wide open to a barrage of missiles that destroyed almost all of its non-nuclear power generation capacity.

Halting missile strikes on energy facilities was also top of the agenda of a failed round of preliminary peace talks due to have been hosted by Qatar last August, that were immediately called off after Ukraine invaded Russia and took control of over 1,000 square kilometres of the Kursk region.

Ukrainian former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pointed out in a post on social media that Ukraine has agreed to over 20 ceasefires over the last three years and every one of them has been broken.

Drone strikes continued

More importantly, Putin refused to halt missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, which continued yesterday, hitting targets across the country. Zelenskiy said that more than 40 Shahed drone attacks were launched against Ukraine as the call ended.

Russia's drone attack hit a hospital in Sumy and Moscow carried out strikes at several other Ukrainian regions, including the Kyiv region that surrounds the Ukrainian capital, according to Bankova.

“Right now, in many regions, you can literally hear what Russia truly needs. Around 40 "Shahed" drones are in our skies, and air defence is active,” Zelenskiy said in a social media post. “Unfortunately, there have been hits, specifically on civilian infrastructure. A direct hit by a "Shahed" drone on a hospital in Sumy, strikes on cities in the Donetsk region, and attack drones currently in the skies over the Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions.”

Russia has launched more than 1,300 glide bombs, eight missiles and nearly 600 long-range strike drones at Ukraine since ceasefire talks kicked off in Riyadh on February 18, Zelenskiy said, who called for the West to toughen its sanctions on Russia in response.

“Sanctions against Russia. Assistance to Ukraine. Strengthening allies in the free world and working toward security guarantees. And only a real cessation of strikes on civilian infrastructure by Russia, as proof of its willingness to end this war, can bring peace closer,” said Zelenskiy.

At the same time Ukraine has been firing back, hitting Russian oil refineries and sending long-distance drones to hit targets in Moscow itself. Bankova announced this week that its home-produced Neptune missile with a 1,500-km range is operational and it has also developed a new drone with a range of 3,000 km that can hit energy assets much deeper in Russian territory than the previous generation, whose range was 2,000 km.

Battlefield advantage

Details of the discussion are still trickling out and much remains unclear. The Kremlin has the advantage on the battlefield and is reluctant to give up its advantage and allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) to regroup and rearm if a genuine ceasefire were put in place.

Russia has just recaptured the Kursk region and the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) has been making steady progress towards the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk on the Donbas front line.

Military aid pause

Reportedly Putin demanded a complete halt of US military aid to Ukraine during any ceasefire to prevent the AFU from rearming. Trump denied that the issue of military supplies to Ukraine during the pause was mentioned in the call in an interview with Fox News.

"No he didn't, we didn't talk about aid, actually we didn't talk about aid at all," Trump said. "We talked about a lot of things, but aid was never discussed."

Putin also said an "essential" condition for any truce would be halting the "forced mobilisation" of Ukrainian soldiers and the country's "rearmament," AFP reports.

Sovereignty claims

Noticeably absent from the readouts from both sides was any mention of territorial concessions – the toughest nut to crack in the ongoing ceasefire talks. The White House has said multiple times that Ukraine will have to “make compromises” but the details of what territory Kyiv will be forced to give up and what its legal status will be are likely to make up the meat of the ongoing negotiations.

However, according to speculation circulating on social media, Moscow is allegedly demanding that the West and Ukraine recognise Crimea, the Donbas and Luhansk “People’s Republics”, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as Russian and is prepared to end the war and not claim more territory, if the West agrees.

Likewise, similar speculation claims that Trump has promised to gradually ease the extreme sanctions regime on Russia as part of a deal.

The issue of Russia’s sovereignty claims on occupied Ukrainian territory also reportedly came up with Putin repeating his desire for recognition of Russia’s ownership of the four regions annexed in 2023.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), the largest in Europe and currently in Russian hands, was mentioned several times in the run up to the talks but not mentioned in the readouts from the White House or the Kremlin. However, from comments on the topic it appears that the Kremlin may use control over the power plant to become a bargaining chip in the ongoing negotiations and that Russia may be prepared to cede control over the NPP in exchange for US concessions.

Likewise, it has been suggested that the Kremlin may be willing to drop its insistence on Ukraine ceding control of the parts of the four regions annexed by Russia and agree to draw the line of contact along the lines of actual and partial occupation of the regions. As bne IntelliNews reported, last year the Kremlin signalled there is “limited wiggle room” over territorial concessions.

The issue of Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea is also a key issue that the Kremlin is not prepared to compromise on and an issue Trump conceded to Russia, but was also not mentioned in the readouts.

Business deals

Business deals were on the agenda as Trump has already expressed an interest in cooperating with Russia on exploiting Russia’s hydrocarbon riches in the Arctic region.

On the same day as the phone call, astronauts stranded on the International Space Station returned to earth – news celebrated by the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund Kirill Dmitriev, who is part of the Russian negotiating team. He has invited US tycoon Elon Musk to jointly organise an exploratory trip to Mars together with Russia.

“Crew Dragon @SpaceX with a Russian cosmonaut has finally returned to Earth – after an extended stay. If not for the Biden administration’s political stubbornness, working with Russia could have brought them home much sooner. Maybe next time, less politics, more space cooperation?” Dmitriev said in a social media post. “Spoke with Roscosmos head Dmitry Bakanov – he agrees. @elonmusk , let’s turn this glorious dream into reality! Life’s too short.”

Prior to the phone call, Dmitriev also repeated earlier Kremlin comments that US firms were welcome to jointly develop Russia’s extensive rare earth metal deposits, which are the second largest in the world.

"They have some valuable things for us, including very big forms of rare earth. They have a lot of earth, you know. They have a big chunk of real estate. The biggest, actually. The biggest in the world, for a country, by far. And on that, they have things that we could use, frankly, and other people could use," Trump said in an interview with Fox News following the call.

Few details of the proposed business cooperation have been released, but following the first round of meetings in Riyadh in February Dmitriev admitted that a “parallel track” of talks has been established to talk projects.

Trump admitted that he was developing "mutually beneficial cooperation" in a number of areas as part of efforts to normalise relations between the two countries, the Kremlin said in a readout of the leaders' phone call on March 18.

Trump and Putin share a "mutual interest in normalising relations” thanks to "the special responsibility of Russia and the United States for ensuring security and stability in the world," the Kremlin's statement reads, The Kyiv Independent reported.

"In this context, a wide range of areas in which our countries could establish interaction was considered. A number of ideas were discussed that are moving towards the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the economy and energy sector."

"A future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside," including "enormous economic deals" and "geopolitical stability," the White House added.

Middle East

The two presidents also discussed possible cooperation on the Middle East. According to the Kremlin readout, another round of talks specifically dealing with a Middle East peace process involving Moscow and Washington will be launched.

As bne IntelliNews reported, Trump is hoping to use Putin to mediate in a deal between the US and Iran as part of a grander plan to bring peace to the Middle East.

Few details on these talks have been released. However, two key players on the Russian and US negotiating team – Dmitriev and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff – are both experts on the Middle East with extensive contacts in the region. The fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has been chosen as the host of the negotiations is also seen as significant.

Europe left out

EU leaders were bristling at being excluded from the talks. Ahead of the phone call, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called Trump to impress on him to put Ukraine into a “position of strength” ahead of the most protracted ceasefire negotiations getting underway now.

“What a surprise – Putin rejects an unconditional ceasefire. He wants to keep bombing and killing innocent Ukrainians. He wants Ukraine disarmed. He wants Ukraine neutralised. He wants to make Ukraine a vassal state of Russia. He isn’t negotiating. He’s laughing at us,” former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a social media post.

However, the White House has largely rebuffed European pressure and ignored its ideas, specifically refusing to provide a US “backstop” to the European plan to send peacekeepers to patrol the line of contact should hostilities cease.

Trump’s preference for bilateral talks suits the Kremlin, which also prefers a one-on-one setting which allows it to make deals. In the prelude to the war in January 2022, the Kremlin insisted on bilateral negotiations with the US where it demanded “no-Nato” for Ukraine, excluding Kyiv and the EU from those talks as well.

US and Russian diplomats are planning to meet again on March 23 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), where the details of the energy ceasefire will be thrashed out and talks to end attacks in the Black Sea will also be discussed.

The Kremlin also claimed that Trump supported Putin's idea to organise hockey matches between professional Russian and American players.

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