JAKARTA - United States President Donald Trump said he plans to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, discussing ways to end the war in Ukraine, after positive talks between officials of the two countries in Moscow last week.
"We want to see if we can end the war," President Trump told reporters on Air Force One as flights return to Washington from Florida.
"Maybe we can, maybe not, but I think we have a very good chance," he continued.
"I will speak with President Putin on Tuesday. A lot of work has been done over the weekend," said President Trump.
President Trump is known to be seeking President Putin's support for a 30-day ceasefire proposal Ukraine received last week.
It is known that both sides continued to launch massive airstrikes over the weekend and Russia was getting closer to expelling Ukrainian troops from their territory that had been going on for months in Kursk, western Russia.
Earlier, the Kremlin said on Friday President Putin had sent a message to President Trump about the ceasefire's plans through US envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks in Moscow, stating "shak optimism", an agreement could be reached to end the three-year conflict.
In a separate appearance on Sunday's TV show in the United States, Witkoff, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz stressed there are still challenges to be resolved before Russia agrees to a ceasefire, let alone the final peaceful resolution to the war.
When asked on ABC whether the US would accept a peace deal that would allow Russia to defend the eastern region of Ukraine it has captured, Waltz replied, "Are we going to expel every Russian from every inch of Ukrainian soil?"
He added that every negotiation must be based on "truth."
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Rubio told CBS the final peace deal would "involving a lot of hard work, concessions from Russia and Ukraine," and it would be difficult to start the negotiations "as long as they attack each other."
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Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday he saw a good chance to end Russia's war after Kyiv accepted US proposals for a temporary ceasefire for 30 days.
However, President Zelensky has consistently said his country's sovereignty is non-negotiable and Russia must surrender the territory it has captured.
Russia is known to have seized the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and now controls most of Ukraine's four eastern regions since it invaded the country in February 2022.
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