Trump says call is set up on Russia and Putin
The announcement comes days after one of the war's largest Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid
Published
Donald Trump said he has a call set up regarding Russia and Vladimir Putin, without giving a date or an agenda. He said the war is getting closer to ending but that the United States still has to "finish it off," and did not describe any new mechanism to do so.
The call would be the latest in a month-long run of announced diplomatic contacts, including Kirill Dmitriev's description of "constructive" meetings and repeated phone calls between Trump and Putin, none of which has produced concrete settlement terms.
It comes as fighting continues on several fronts. Russia carried out one of its largest strikes on Ukraine's energy grid in recent days, killing nine people, according to Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said 650 Ukrainian drones targeted the Russian capital region overnight on October 5. Russia's Transport Ministry said an unmanned vessel attacked the tanker Aframax Rio in the Black Sea, though all 23 crew members were unharmed. Russia's defence ministry said it struck data centres in major Ukrainian cities, and Rosatom's chief said Ukraine had attacked two sites at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
With no stated agenda or timeline attached to the new call, it reads as a continuation of the pattern that has defined the war since late September: diplomatic scheduling moving forward while the fighting on the ground does not slow.