Marathon Putin-Trump call leaves EU in limbo on Ukraine war

Russia and Ukraine might sign a "memorandum of understanding" as a "prelude" to a peace deal if "root causes" of the war were eliminated – that was the outcome of a two-hour phone call between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump on Monday (19 May), according to Putin, quoted by Russia state media Tass and RIA.

The talks were "detailed, frank, informative, and useful", Putin said.

"For my part, I noted that Russia also favours a peaceful settlement," he added.

And Putin said lower-level talks between Russian and Ukrainian diplomats, which began in Istanbul last week, were to resume.

Trump posted on social media that the Vatican was willing to host Russia-Ukraine talks.

He said his Putin call went "very well" and that the "tone and spirit" were "excellent".

He had spoken with the leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen after his Putin call, he added.

Monday's talks came after more than three years of Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is killing some 1,500 soldiers a day on both sides, as well as dozens of Ukrainian civilians.

Trump, in his election campaign last year, said he would end the war in one day after he was voted in, in his bid to win the Nobel peace prize.

Trump spoke to Putin from Washington on Monday, while the Russian leader spoke from a children's music school in Sochi, in southern Russia, in a minor snub, indicating Putin couldn't be bothered to interrupt his daily schedule, for a conversation that EU leaders saw as key to the future of European security.

The EU had been "waiting with anxiety" for the "essential" conversation, EU Council chairman António Costa said earlier on Monday.

EU leaders and Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy had also been pressing for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire to come out of the US-Russia call, instead of a "prelude" to a "memorandum".

Trump had threatened he would impose sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, such as India and China, if Putin declined a ceasefire.

But he, and his vice-president, JD Vance, had also said they might walk away from involvement in the conflict if there was no chance of peace, in what would amount to a gift for Putin, if that meant no more US military or intelligence support for Ukraine.

And Trump had shown strong interest in resuming business ties with Russia and ending Western sanctions, in ideas that might have taken up part of the two-hour long talks on Monday.

Trump even noted in his Truth Social post after Monday's call that there was "unlimited potential" in US-Russia trade "once this [the Ukraine war] is over".

Root causes

But as Costa, von der Leyen, and other EU leaders pondered the meaning of Monday's events, they might also have in mind the words of the US ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, who resigned last month in protest at US policy.

Putin's mention of "root causes" on Monday highlighted that his idea of peace meant: Ukraine should cede territory to Russia, disband its army, never join Nato, not host Western peacekeepers, and that Nato forces should retreat to pre-1990s enlargement lines.

Brink, the ex-US ambassador told US broadcaster CBS on Sunday: "I resigned from Ukraine and also from the foreign service, because the policy since the beginning of the [Trump] administration was to put pressure on the victim Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia".

"I fully agree that the war needs to end, but I believe that peace at any price is not peace at all. It’s appeasement and, as we know from history, appeasement only leads to more war," she said.

And as if to prove her right, Putin intensified drone strikes on Ukraine in the run-up to Monday, as well as beefing up military bases on the border with Finland.

Russia also detained an oil tanker, the Green Admire, sailing out of Estonia on Sunday, in a minor act of aggression against Nato.

And his forces continue to make advances on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, suggesting he doesn't want an off-ramp to the war, despite any Vatican or Istanbul talks with Kyiv.

"Putin isn't interested in a collapse of the talks. He's trying to manoeuvre so that these negotiations continue alongside the military offensive", said Russian political consultant Sergei Markov, speaking to Bloomberg on Monday.

There is also little prospect of Putin meeting with Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelenskyy face-to-face to advance peace, an EU diplomat told EUobserver.

'Ukrainian khohol'

"Putin's propaganda has depicted him [Zelenskyy] as a Nazi and a 'Ukrainian Khohol', so I can't imagine Putin 'stooping down' to ever talk to him," the diplomat said.

'Khohol' is an anti-Ukrainian ethnic slur.

Meanwhile, even if Russia and Ukraine were to stop shooting and sign a memo, the rhetoric and military build up in Russia augur badly for long-term peace in Europe.

"The increase of military force in our nearby areas will [really] happen after the fighting in Ukraine quiets down," Janne Kuusela, the defence policy director at the Finnish ministry of defence, told the New York Times on Monday.

The EU diplomat told this website: "If there is a ceasefire in Ukraine, we should expect Russia's hybrid warfare in Europe to escalate, because Putin will be able to divert his resources from Ukraine".

'Hybrid warfare' refers to propaganda, sabotage, and targeted assassinations designed to fall below Nato's threshold for triggering its treaty's Article V mutual defence clause.