President Donald Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin to start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

In a detailed post on his Truth Social account, Trump delivered a surprising announcement. The two leaders engaged in a 90-minute conversation over the phone on Wednesday.

He also said the two leaders agreed they will visit each other’s countries soon.

Trump expressed their mutual goal to prevent the increasing casualties in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He mentioned that President Putin referenced his robust campaign slogan, ‘COMMON SENSE,’ indicating a shared belief in its principles. The decision to collaborate closely, including reciprocal visits, was reached by both leaders.

The president said his next call is with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

Additionally, Trump highlighted the immediate commencement of negotiations by their respective teams. He emphasized the plan to contact President Zelenskyy of Ukraine promptly to brief him on their discussion, a task Trump intended to carry out without delay.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands as they meet in Helsinki in July 2018

Trump vowed to end the war. 

‘Millions of people have died in a War that would not have happened if I were President, but it did happen, so it must end. No more lives should be lost!,’ he said.

Trump and Putin spoke for nearly an hour and a half and agreed to meet, the Kremlin said in its readout of the call.

It was Putin’s first known direct contact with a U.S. president since February 2022. 

‘President Putin…agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement could be reached through peaceful negotiations,’ the Kremlin said.

The call followed a prisoner swap that resulted in Russia releasing American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, of Pennsylvania, after more than three years of detention.

Trump welcomed Fogel at the White House Tuesday evening after his return to U.S. soil. 

Alexander Vinnik, a convicted Russian criminal, also is being freed as part of a swap.

Vinnik was arrested in 2017 in Greece at the request of the U.S. on cryptocurrency fraud charges and was later extradited to the United States where he pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is currently in custody in California awaiting transport to return to Russia, officials told the Associated Press.  

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the start of the Ukraine Defense Contact group meeting at NATO headquarters

The call between Trump and Putin took place as the administration announced that America will no longer front the lion’s share of aid to Ukraine. The decision is a devastating blow to Kyiv and will pile pressure on Europe to fill the void.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that Washington will ‘no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship’ with its allies, adding that ‘Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine’.

He stressed that the United States was no longer ‘primarily focused’ on Europe, and said that the old continent would have to fund most of Ukraine’s defense itself – as experts warned the demands on Europe were ‘unachievable at this time’.

In a boon for Putin, Hegseth added that the United States would not deploy troops to Ukraine to uphold any peace deal with Russia – one of the key security guarantees requested by Zelensky.

Hegseth also said that it was implausible for Ukraine to expect to return to a pre-war state, assessing that any peace process ‘must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective’.

‘The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defence partnership with Europe, full stop,’ he said. ‘But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.’

Washington’s allies have been waiting nervously for clarity from Trump’s administration after the he demanded that NATO more than double its defence spending target and vowed to end the war in Ukraine.

Hegseth’s comments will compound Ukrainian fears and hand leverage to Russia, after Trump suggested the country ‘may be Russian someday’ in unsettling comments during an interview with Fox News, aired Monday.