On March 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone. Unfortunately, no concrete agreement was reached on ending the war during the conversation that lasted about 2 hours. In particular, Vladimir Putin explained to the diplomat that Russia would not accept a 30-day ceasefire.
As they say, excuse me, there was one "serious agreement". While thousands of people were dying on both sides, Putin proposed holding a hockey match in the US and Russia with the participation of American and Russian hockey players. Trump accepted the offer with pleasure...
A conversation watched by the whole world
The conversation between Putin and Trump was eagerly awaited by the whole world. There was even a report online about how the conversation was going. I personally saw yesterday for the first time that a politician was having a good conversation with a person and then reporting on an unfinished conversation.
American publications wrote that Trump and Putin had a “very good conversation.” However, to say that this “very good conversation” brought the world closer to ending the war would be an exaggeration. The most important thing in the conversation was the prisoner exchange.
During the conversation, Putin announced that Russia and Ukraine would hold another prisoner exchange on March 19. According to Putin, both sides would return 175 prisoners. In particular, Russia would release 23 seriously wounded Ukrainian soldiers.
Putin did not accept the ceasefire
During the telephone conversation, Vladimir Putin explained “in a nutshell” that he would not accept the 30-day ceasefire regime between the United States and Ukraine. That is, Putin said that there are many details that need to be clarified in this regard. In return, the Russian president put forward a proposal not to strike energy facilities for 30 days. That is, if Ukraine does not strike oil and other energy-related facilities in Russia, the Russians promised not to strike power plants in Ukraine.
More precisely, according to this proposal, it will be possible to strike any facilities, even civilian ones, but it will be prohibited to strike oil depots and power plants. Therefore, we can safely say that Putin rejected the 30-day ceasefire agreement.
Ukraine supported Putin's proposal to stop striking power facilities. However, Zelensky said that drones had attacked Ukrainian skies during the night after the phone call. In particular, 10 cities in Ukraine were attacked by drones after Putin and Trump spoke. The Kremlin reported that Putin had ordered the Russian military not to strike Ukrainian energy infrastructure after the conversation.
Disagreement
The two sides gave different accounts of the phone call, and interestingly, there are a number of misunderstandings. For example, according to the official Kremlin statement, Putin called the cessation of military aid to Ukraine a key condition for a peace agreement during the conversation. However, Trump gave an interview to Fox News immediately after the conversation and said that he and Putin did not discuss this issue at all: “We did not talk about military aid at all. We talked about a lot of things, but there was no mention of military aid,” Trump said.
Another interesting difference in the statements of the two sides concerns Iran. For example, the Kremlin statement says that the two presidents discussed the situation in the Middle East in general terms. However, the statement released by the White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt says something different about this. We quote it directly: “The leaders of the two countries shared the view that Iran should never be in a position to destroy Israel.”
That is, according to the White House statement, Putin supported Trump's idea that "Iran should not be strong enough to destroy Israel." At this point, we would like to remind you that Iran and Russia are strategic partners, and Iran was the first country to provide military assistance to Russia during the war.
In short, the conversation between Putin and Trump did not live up to expectations. The world did not come closer to peace. Russians and Ukrainians continue to die in the trenches due to an illogical war. The worst thing is that there is no one in the world who can influence the war more than Trump and Putin. If the conversation between these two cannot stop the war, then it will not be easy to end this massacre...
Prepared by Utkir Jalolkhanov.
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