WEB DESK
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he and Russia’s leader agreed in a phone call to “immediately” begin negotiations with Ukraine’s leader to bring an end to the nearly three-year-conflict.
“We will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful.”
Trump did not specify what the terms might be to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in Germany Wednesday for a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, ruled out a key demand by Ukraine’s: eventual membership in NATO.
“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said.
Trump’s top hostage negotiator on Wednesday credited Trump’s “great friendship” with Russia’s leader and with Saudi Arabia’s prince as key in releasing American teacher Marc Fogel from Russian custody late Tuesday.
“I think that getting Mark Fogel out was critical and the Russians were very, very helpful in that effort and very accommodating,” Witkoff said, speaking to reporters at the White House. “And I think that’s maybe a sign about how that working relationship between President Trump and President Putin will be in the future and what that may portend for the world at large for conflict and so forth. I think they had a great friendship. And I think now it’s going to continue and it’s a really good thing for the world.”
Trump welcomed Fogel to the White House late Tuesday. He had been detained since August 2021 for bringing medically prescribed marijuana into the country.
“I feel like the luckiest man on Earth right now,” Fogel said as he stood next to Trump at the White House late Tuesday.
Trump said he appreciated what Russia did in letting Fogel go home but declined to specify the details of any agreement with Russia beyond calling it “very fair” and very reasonable.”
Trump also said another hostage release would be announced Wednesday.
Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, said earlier Tuesday the United States and Russia “negotiated an exchange” to free Fogel but gave no details about what the U.S. side of the bargain entailed. In such deals in recent years, the U.S has often released Russian prisoners that Moscow wanted in exchange.
Instead, Waltz cast the deal for Fogel’s release in broader geopolitical terms, saying it was “a show of good faith from the Russians and a sign we are moving in the right direction to end the brutal and terrible war in Ukraine,” an invasion Russia launched against its neighbor in February 2022, with hundreds of thousands killed or wounded on both sides.