Trump hopes for Russia-Ukraine ceasefire progress ahead of calls with Putin, Zelenskyy

President Donald Trump is hoping separate phone calls Monday with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will make progress toward a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.

Trump expressed his hopes for a "productive day" Monday — and a ceasefire — in a social media post over the weekend. His effort will also include calls to NATO leaders. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to the media on Monday that Putin and Trump will speak at 10 a.m. ET, calling the conversation "important, given the talks that took place in Istanbul" last week between Russian and Ukrainian officials, the first such negotiations since March 2022. 

Trump has struggled to end a war that began with Russia's invasion in February 2022, and that makes these conversations a serious test of his reputation as a dealmaker after having claimed he would quickly settle the conflict once he was back in the White House, if not even before he took office.

The Republican president is banking on the idea that his forceful personality and personal history with Putin will be enough to break any impasse over a pause in the fighting.

"His sensibilities are that he's got to get on the phone with President Putin, and that is going to clear up some of the logjam and get us to the place that we need to get to," said Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff. "I think it's going to be a very successful call."

Still, there are fears that Trump has an affinity for Putin that could put Ukraine at a disadvantage with any agreements engineered by the U.S. government. 

Bridget Brink said she resigned last month as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine "because the policy since the beginning of the administration was to put pressure on the victim Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia."

Brink said the sign that she needed to depart was an Oval Office meeting in February where Trump and his team openly berated Zelenskyy for not being sufficiently deferential to them.

"I believe that peace at any price is not peace at all," Brink said. "It's appeasement and as we know from history, appeasement only leads to more war."

Trump's frustration about the war had been building before his post Saturday on Truth Social about the coming calls.

Trump said his discussion with Putin would focus on stopping the "bloodbath" of the war. It also will cover trade, a sign that Trump might be seeking to use financial incentives to broker some kind of agreement after Russia's invasion led to severe sanctions by the United States and its allies, which has steadily eroded Moscow's ability to grow.

Trump's hope, according to the post, is that "a war that should have never happened will end."

His treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that Trump had made it clear that a failure by Putin to negotiate "in good faith" could lead to additional sanctions against Russia.