U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke today for about an hour. As characterized by Yury Ushakov, Putin’s senior advisor on foreign policy, “the conversation between the two presidents has, as always, shown that they are on the same page. It was candid, business-minded, and concrete. The two presidents will naturally continue communicating and will have another conversation soon.”
Putin “offered greetings” to Trump on the occasion of the upcoming Fourth of July commemoration of “Independence Day,” and then recalled “that Russia had played a significant part in the establishment of the United States as a nation, including during the War of Independence, fought 250 years ago, and later during the Civil War, which ended 160 years ago. It was stated that our countries are bound not only by their alliance during World Wars One and Two, but also by deeper historical ties.”
The Middle East, as Ushakov reported, occupied a good deal of the two presidents’ attention: “There was a detailed discussion of the situation surrounding Iran, and the state of affairs in the Middle East in general. The Russian side emphasized it was crucial to settle any and all contentious issues, differences, and conflicts exclusively via political and diplomatic means. The two leaders agreed to maintain contact on the issue between the respective foreign services, defense ministries, and presidential aides.”
Ushakov added: “Naturally, the issues surrounding Ukraine were also discussed. Donald Trump has once again raised the issue of ending the hostilities as soon as possible. In turn, Vladimir Putin noted that we still continued the search for a political, negotiated solution to the conflict. He informed his counterpart on the progress in implementing the humanitarian agreements reached during the second round of direct Russian-Ukrainian talks held in Istanbul. He also noted Russia was willing to pursue negotiations.” Then Ushakov made clear their determination: “Additionally, the President of Russia said that Russia would strive to achieve its goals, namely the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, the bitter confrontation that we are seeing now. Russia will not back down from these goals.”
The two presidents also “confirmed their mutual interest in implementing a number of promising projects in economy, notably the energy sector and space exploration.” And when Putin offered “an exchange of motion pictures promoting traditional values, which both we and the Trump administration hold dear,” Ushakov said that “President Trump reacted immediately and said he liked this idea.”
For his part Trump offered some off-handed comments as he was boarding a flight: “We had a call, it was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things, including Iran. We also talked about the war with Ukraine.” Trump shook his head and said, “I’m not happy about that.” Asked about a potential deal to stop the fighting, he said: “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today.”
