Phone call between Trump and Putin dampens Kyiv’s hopes

Call between US and Russian leaders results in Trump softening position on Moscow and speaking at meeting in Hungary

Vladimir Putin’s surprise phone call to Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to undermine Ukrainian hopes of receiving Tomahawk missiles, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy heads to Washington to meet the US president and discuss the issue.

Top Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin initiated the conversation with Trump, during which the Russian leader asked his American counterpart not to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles — a weapon long sought by Kiev that would give it its longest-range strike capability to date and put Moscow within its reach.

It was the eighth known call between the two men since Trump began his second term in January, and it followed a familiar pattern in the complex and often confusing fight between Putin and Zelensky for Trump’s attention.

On previous occasions, when Trump appeared ready to tilt toward Kiev and its European allies, a phone call from Putin was often followed by a sudden softening in the American leader’s tone toward Moscow.

After impressively expressing his frustrations with Putin in recent weeks and hinting that he was ready to supply Tomahawk missiles to Zelenskyy, Trump appeared to backtrack on Thursday night.

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too. We have a lot, but we need them. I mean, we can’t run out of them for our country,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what we can do about it,” he added.

In recounting his conversation with Putin, Trump said: “I actually said, ‘Would you mind if I gave a few thousand Tomahawks to your opposition?’ I told him that. I said it exactly like that.

“He didn’t like the idea. Sometimes you need to be a little more carefree.”

Trump said he would tell Zelenskyy what he and Putin discussed when he met with the Ukrainian president on Friday.

Following Putin’s call, Trump also announced that he planned to meet with the Russian president in the Hungarian capital at a yet-to-be-determined date in an effort to end the war.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday morning that the summit could take place “within two weeks or later.”

Peskov said Putin had already discussed the planned meeting with Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister. Orbán – an outlier among European leaders with close ties to Trump and Putin – said he had also spoken to Trump about the summit, writing in X: “Preparations for the US-Russia peace summit are underway.”

It remains unclear how Putin would travel to Hungary, given EU sanctions and airspace restrictions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the fact that he is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). As a signatory to the ICC, Hungary would be obliged to arrest him, although Orbán has previously said that this would not happen.

When asked about the logistical challenges, Peskov said the route was “so far, of course, unclear.”

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Friday that Putin will be able to enter and leave the country. “There is no need for any kind of consultation with anyone, we are a sovereign country here. We will receive [Putin] With respect, we will host him and provide him with the conditions to negotiate with the American president,” he said at a press conference.

Trump and Putin last met in Alaska in August, without making any diplomatic progress. Trump added that new high-level talks between Washington and Moscow will be held next week, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ahead of a presidential summit in Budapest.

The latest conversation, which lasted more than two and a half hours, appears to have undermined the momentum Zelenskyy had built with Trump, as the American leader is now unlikely to show major support for Ukraine before meeting Putin.

“Zelenskyy must be tearing his hair out. Today’s meeting with Trump was completely overshadowed and surpassed by the Budapest meeting,” said John Foreman, a former British defense attaché in Moscow and Kiev.

Trump also hinted that talks between Putin and Zelenskyy may need to occur indirectly, contradicting Zelenskyy’s long-standing goal of meeting Putin in person to end the war.

“The two of them don’t get along very well,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll do something where we’re separate. Separate but equal.”

Ushakov, for his part, told reporters in Moscow that Putin warned Trump during the call that providing Kyiv with Tomahawks “would not change the situation on the battlefield, but would cause substantial damage to the relationship between our countries.”

Zelenskyy, who landed in Washington on Thursday and met with U.S. defense contractors ahead of his White House visit, has not commented on the call between Putin and Trump, although few in Kiev are likely to view it positively.

Some Ukrainian officials tried to put a positive spin on the call, saying Putin’s approach highlighted the Russian leader’s fears about new Ukrainian arms supplies.

“Today’s call between US President Donald Trump and Putin demonstrates how even the discussion over Tomahawk missiles had already forced Putin to resume dialogue with the United States,” Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, wrote in X. “The bottom line is that we need to continue with firm steps. Force can actually create momentum for peace.”

While Moscow has repeatedly said it is ready to end its invasion of Ukraine, Putin has given no indication that he is seeking a deal or scaling back his maximalist goal of forcing Kiev to capitulate.

Despite Trump’s typically upbeat rhetoric that peace may be near, US Vice President JD Vance took a more cautious stance on Thursday, saying that “the Russians and the Ukrainians are not yet at the point where they can reach a deal” and that a deal “remains possible but will require much more work.”

In an interview with the conservative network Newsmax, Vance spoke about what he called a “misalignment of expectations,” saying that “Russians tend to think they are doing better on the battlefield than they actually are.”

Originally published by The Guardian on 10/17/2025

By Pjotr ​​Sauer – Russian Affairs Reporter

Additional reporting by Jennifer Rankin