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With Putin, Trump settles for less (for now)

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump hold a bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksMarch 18, 2025
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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Following a “frank exchange of opinions” between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the US president came away from this much-anticipated two-and-a-half-hour phone call on Tuesday with much less than he had agreed with Ukraine.

Putin offered Trump a ceasefire that would halt attacks by either side on energy infrastructure, a frequent recent target of both Russian and Ukrainian long-range fire. The two sides would exchange prisoners, though it’s not yet clear which ones, and Trump and Putin agreed to begin bargaining over terms for safe shipping in the Black Sea. These are Russia’s conditions for a ceasefire.

A few minutes later, Trump posted on his Truth Social account that, during their “very good and productive phone call,” Putin had agreed to an “immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and infrastructure,” and that all sides would be “working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire” and “an END to this very horrible war.”

This falls well short of the immediate cessation of fighting on land, sea, and air that Trump hoped to announce.

By agreeing last week to Trump’s no-preconditions ceasefire, Ukraine was able to push the diplomatic ball into Russia’s court. Putin has now slapped it back, and it’s not yet clear how the Ukrainian government will respond.

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