Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump during an October 16 phone call that he was prepared to drop claims to the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions—areas partially controlled by Russia—in return for Ukraine ceding the entire Donetsk region, The Washington Post reported, citing two US officials familiar with the conversation.
Earlier, Russia’s state news outlet TASS, citing Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, said the call took place at Moscow’s initiative. According to Ushakov, Putin and Trump discussed Middle East diplomacy, the situation on the front lines, a forthcoming US–Russia summit, and humanitarian issues, including reunifying Russian and Ukrainian children with their families. Moscow did not mention any discussion of territorial claims or possible conditions to end the war.
The demands Putin outlined, according to The Washington Post, are less sweeping than those he put forward during his August meeting with Trump in Anchorage. Some White House officials viewed that shift as a sign of progress, but a European diplomat familiar with the talks called Putin’s position “an attempt to sell Ukraine its own leg in exchange for nothing.”
Earlier reports, including from Bloomberg, indicated that in Anchorage Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw its forces from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, offering in return to halt offensive operations in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson and to pull back from occupied areas of the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions. After the summit, it was reported that Trump agreed to those territorial claims.
Trump has not publicly commented on Putin’s new demand. Following his October 17 meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, he again said it was “time to stop the killing and make a deal,” urging both sides to “stop where they are.” In the coming weeks, the US president plans to meet Putin in Budapest to continue negotiations.
Fighting in the Donetsk region has been ongoing since 2011, but Russia’s military has not managed to capture it in full. Ukraine still controls the northwest of the region, including the major cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
