US President Donald Trump did not call Russian President Vladimir Putin after talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, although he had previously said publicly that he would do so once the meeting ended.
The absence of a call was reported by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. According to him, Trump was apparently busy after the events in Ankara, so no contact took place the previous day.
“Mr. Trump was apparently very busy after all the contacts in Ankara, so no one called yesterday,” Peskov said, adding that the Russian president is “always happy to talk.”
Trump and Zelensky met on July 8 during the NATO summit in Ankara. Before the talks began, Trump had said that he intended to speak with Putin afterward.
During the meeting itself, according to the source text, Trump promised to grant Ukraine a license to produce Patriot missiles. He also welcomed long-range Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, calling them an escalation that could, in his view, lead to the end of the war.
Ukraine’s presidential office gave a positive assessment of the talks. It said the Trump-Zelensky meeting was one of the best, and possibly the best, of the entire period.
“This is a powerful signal to Moscow. Both the Ukraine-US meeting and the summit itself, the discussion there, and the final declaration,” said Andriy Kyslytsya, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office.