Trump Reveals Having Good Communication with Putin and Zelensky

JAKARTA - US President Donald Trump on Sunday revealed that he had "good communication" with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his efforts to resolve the Ukrainian war.

"We are working on the situation in Russia, Russia and Ukraine, and hopefully we will succeed," President Trump said in an interview on Fox News' "The Sunday Briefing" show, as reported by Al Arabiya from Reuters (27/4).

Furthermore, President Trump said he did not want to reveal when he last spoke to President Putin.

"I did speak to him, and I did speak to President Zelensky, and it was a good conversation," he said, without saying when the calls with the two leaders took place.

"The hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky is ridiculous. It's crazy. And hatred is a bad thing. Hatred is a bad thing when you're trying to solve something, but it will happen," he said.

President Trump has pledged to end the war that began with Russia's massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but more than a year into his second term, the conflict is still ongoing.

Last week, the president acknowledged the war in Iran had distracted from Russia's aggression against his country, saying he considered efforts to end the fighting in Ukraine could not continue until the conflict in Iran ended was a "big risk."

Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour from the Presidential Office in Kyiv, President Zelensky said on Wednesday, although technical talks with the United States are still ongoing, he "does not see an opportunity to meet until this Iranian problem, conflict is over."

President Zelensky highlighted that it was a "challenge" because the same US negotiating team - led by US envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner - was leading both talks on the war in Iran and in Ukraine.

He said that although he understood that the US was currently focused on the war against Iran, it was important not to forget Ukraine where the fighting was still ongoing.

The Ukrainian leader said it was impossible to say "we will talk about (Ukraine) later. Ukraine is not 'later'. Ukraine is already in such a big tragedy, we have to find a way to manage this in parallel."

President Zelensky also said that the war had caused a bottleneck in the supply of a number of weapons important to Ukraine - especially anti-ballistic missiles, which he said Ukraine did not get enough of due to limited production capacity in the US.