President Trump said on Wednesday that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, characterizing it as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war in Ukraine.
It was the first confirmed conversation between the two men during Mr. Trump’s second term, coming as Mr. Trump has made clear to advisers that finding a U.S.-backed end to war that began with Russian’s invasion is a priority for his administration.
“We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post.
“We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,” Mr. Trump added. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.” (An estimated several hundred thousand deaths have occurred in the conflict, not millions.)
The U.S. president said he planned to inform President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that both countries planned to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.” Mr. Zelensky’s office later said that the Ukrainian president spoke with Mr. Trump for an hour.
However, Mr. Trump did not say in his social media post how Mr. Zelensky would factor into the negotiations that he and Mr. Putin were setting in motion. Mr. Trump has long been skeptical of Ukraine and has never warmed to Mr. Zelensky.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that Mr. Putin’s call with Mr. Trump lasted almost an hour and a half.
He said that the two men agreed to hold a personal meeting and that Mr. Putin invited Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, something that Mr. Trump also alluded to in his social media post. Mr. Putin agreed with Mr. Trump that “the time has come for our countries to work together,” Mr. Peskov said.
On Ukraine, Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” Mr. Peskov said. That was a sign that Mr. Putin would not accept a simple cease-fire in Ukraine and would seek broader concessions from Ukraine and the West before he stops fighting.
The Ukrainians appear to be facing an effort in which they have little leverage. The call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump came on the same day that the U.S. secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, speaking at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, said that it was an “unrealistic” objective for Ukraine to restore its borders as they were before 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Mr. Hegseth added that the U.S. does not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a realistic peace plan.
He also suggested that Europe needed to assume a greater role in its own defense, echoing a point that Mr. Trump has made for many years.
For Mr. Putin, the call was a major milestone, marking the collapse of Western efforts to isolate him diplomatically after he invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago. Ever since Mr. Trump’s re-election in November, the Russian president has heaped praise on Mr. Trump, underlining the Kremlin’s hope that the new American leader could reshape Moscow’s relationship with Washington and back away from supporting Ukraine.
In response to news of the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, the United Nations said Wednesday that it welcomed any efforts leading to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
“We would appreciate any efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine that would involve the Russian and Ukrainian sides, so obviously if both of them are willing to be involved in the process, that would be a welcome development,” said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.
Mr. Trump wrote in his social media post that the U.S. negotiating team would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff was in Moscow this week and retrieved the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned for more than three years in Russia.
Mr. Trump did not mention Keith Kellogg, the retired general named by Mr. Trump as his envoy for Russia and Ukraine.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to say whether he’s spoken to Mr. Putin before Wednesday, although individuals who would know of such a call in the U.S. government were not aware of one, according to people briefed on the president’s conversations.
Mr. Trump has often made admiring remarks about the Russian president, whom he called a “genius” after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But in the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term, he was more critical, saying the Russian president should not have invaded Ukraine.
“He can’t be thrilled, he’s not doing so well,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office hours after he was inaugurated. “Russia is bigger, they have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”
Farnaz Fassihi and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.
