Trump says call with Zelenskyy ‘very good’ and ‘we are very much on track’ as Russia and Ukraine exchange PoWs – live | Europe

The Trump-Zelenskyy call is now under way, both sides confirmed.

Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff, said in a social media post:

Happening Now—President Trump is in the Oval Office on a call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy’s spokesperson Sergiy Nykyforov also told reporters that the president was “having a conversation by telephone with US President Donald Trump,” AFP reported.

in Kyiv

I sat down in Kyiv with Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to President Zelenskyy.

He said that the talks planned for Sunday in Saudi Arabia are expected to be bilateral between the US and Russia, and said there were no plans for Ukraine to take part, though he conceded that we would have to wait for the results of a Trump-Zelenskyy call later to know when further talks involving Ukraine will take place.

Of the call, he said:

“The president wants to understand the contents of this call fully from Trump. The main thing is to understand how Trump sees the results of his call with Putin, and to draw conclusions from that.”

Reflecting on the last discussion between Trump and Zelenskyy, the disastrous meeting in the White House, he said:

“It was a fairly emotional conversation in the Oval Office, and it showed that contradictions had built up.

These contradictions were then put on the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia, and very quickly formal and informal communications were made.

The administrations created negotiating teams and we quickly moved to discussing concrete issues around these contradictions and found a synchronised position.”

On the Kremlin statement that Putin had said the West should cease all western military support and intelligence sharing to Ukraine before a ceasefire could be agreed, he said:

“It’s a very strange demand, of course. He’s saying, ‘We want you to be disarmed and then we can keep on fighting the war’. That’s what it sounds like…

He wants Ukraine to give up its army, to give up security guarantees, to give up its right to be in alliances, and to give up on various territories.

This is what he’s been fighting for three years, and he couldn’t do it militarily… And now that’s what he wants from the negotiations process.”

US national security adviser Mike Waltz has just said he agreed with his Russian counterpart, Yuri Ushakov, that the two sides will hold further talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, aimed at “expanding the partial ceasefire president Trump secured from Russia.”

Here is what he said:

“I spoke today with my Russian counterpart Yuri Ushakov about President Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine. We agreed our technical teams would meet in Riyadh in the coming days to focus on implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire President Trump secured from Russia.”

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged 372 soldiers in a prisoner swap brokered by the United Arab Emirates, the Russian defence ministry said Wednesday, as reported by AFP in the last few minutes.

The Kremlin announced the swap on Tuesday, following talks between US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Moscow returned 175 Ukrainian POWs, as well as “22 seriously wounded prisoners of war in need of urgent medical assistance”, while Kyiv returned 175 Russian troops, the Russian defence ministry said.

US president Donald Trump is “likely” to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin at some point, US envoy Steve Witkoff told Bloomberg TV.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, he said:

“You know, I can’t speak for them, but my best bet would be that it’s likely to happen. They have a great rapport together. They had a great rapport in the first Trump administration.

It was on display yesterday. This was really a very positive, very proactive, outcome oriented call, and that’s who President Trump is. He’s there to get to the goalline. And we did a we went a long way yesterday to doing that.”

Witkoff was also asked about the outcomes from yesterday’s call and if Russian attacks on Ukraine over the night broke the arrangements.

He said that the leaders agreed on “cessation of attacks on energy infrastructure … and civilian infrastructure,” with a plan to “work towards a Black Sea moratorium on hits on naval vessels and freighters carrying grants and things on that sort.”

But he dismissed claims – including from Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy – that Russian strikes overnight crossed the agreed line.

He said that just before coming on air he confirmed it “on good information” that “Putin issued an order within 10 minutes of his call with the president directing Russian forces not to be attacking any Ukrainian energy infrastructure.”

“Any attacks that happened last night would have happened before that order was given,” he claimed.

He added that “in fact, the Russians tell me this morning that seven of their drones were on their way when president Putin issued his order and they were shot down by Russian forces.”

“So I tend to believe that President Putin is operating in good faith. He said that he was going to be operating in good faith to the President yesterday, and I take him at his word,” he said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to speak with US president Donald Trump shortly, as per earlier comments.

A White House official confirmed earlier that the call was expected at 10am ET, which is 2pm GMT and 3pm CET.

We will bring you the two sides’ readouts from the call as soon as we get them.

Zelenskyy ends on a strong note talking about the historic Ukrainian struggle for independence and freedom, saying “the most important thing is who will win in the end.”

He repeats that Ukraine will not recognise Russian-occupied territories as Russian, even if it cannot reclaim them back immediately.

That concludes their event at the University of Helsinki.

Responding to questions from students, Zelenskyy once again thanks for the support Ukraine has been getting from the Finnish society, “from the very beginning,” sending a signal to their political leaders.

He then gets asked about the role of Finland and the EU in rebuilding Ukraine after the war.

Unusually, he responds in English, saying that the countries supporting Ukraine will have a role to play, often building on co-production and partnerships established during the war.

Stubb adds that it should be “a low hanging fruit” for Europe and a strong “business opportunity,” and he also mentions access to the EU internal market that would come with a potential EU membership.

Stubb praises Europe’s increasingly united response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying “I do not think I have in my 30 years of studying the EU … seen the EU more united than what we have been in the past three years,” in the face of aggression.

He specifically praises UK prime minister Keir Starmer saying that “it has … , in a kind of absurd way, brought the continent closer to the British Isles again, which is not a bad thing at all, quite the contrary.”

He further talks up Starmer and Macron’s plans for a “coalition of the willing,” and says jokingly that it is “remarkable that in the first three months of President Trump in office we will have seen so much pressure on the European side that they have done more about their own defence than they [had] in 30 years previously.”

Both leaders then go on a longer exchange on the need for European unity to counter Russian aggression.

Zelenskyy’s comments are mostly in Ukrainian, but he briefly switches to English, after the host asks him if she understood him correctly to be striking a slightly positive note, or if it was just a mistranslation.

Smiling, he responds in English:

We have to be positive because of our people, because of our heroic soldiers, and because of such our friends.

He then goes back to speaking in Ukrainian again.

Zelenskyy also offers his take on sanctions, saying that they were “important” to compel Putin to consider ceasefire and abandon his policy of intimidation of Ukrainians through attacks.

But he says that, on sanctions, their “quality” was more important then “quantity,” including how water-tight and strictly enforced they are.

He calls out some countries for “helping out” with circumventing sanctions, and so it is more important to make sure they are properly implemented.

Zelenskyy also gets asked about his upcoming call with Trump, and once again says he would rather speak about it after the call happened.

But says it is an important opportunity to once again reiterate that Ukraine wants peace, as he backs Trump’s initiative for as expansive ceasefire as possible.

He also repeated an earlier line that Ukrainians were ready for further talks in Saudi Arabia if needed.

Stubb joins in to make a point differentiating the initial ceasefire and the broader peace settlement further down the line.

Making a hockey reference, he says that as Ukraine, Finland, Europe and the US all want peace and a ceasefire, “the puck is in the Russian zone.”

“We have to remember that Ukraine has approved the ceasefire without any kind of conditions, and yesterday’s conversation proved that Putin would not be willing to do that. His ceasefire is very partial,” he says.

He says he hopes Trump and the US will “continue to put pressure on Russia,” mentioning sanctions and the use of frozen Russian assets.

Stubb also reveales he spoke with the Republican US senator Lindsey Graham “who is pushing through a bill in the Senate to maximise the pressure” on Russia.

In his opening comments, Zelenskyy thanks Finland for continuing support as it tells Russia that “Ukraine is not alone, Russia is alone, it is the aggressor.”

He notes that Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a shift in public opinion on Nato in Fnland and Sweden.

He also stresses that “our fight for independence of Ukraine is ultimately a war for the freedom of all of Europe.”

Zelenskyy is again appearing with Finland’s Stubb, this time in front of students at the University of Helsinki, talking about “Europe alongside Ukraine.”

Stubb opens the event saying that Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 “shattered” the post-1989 world order, putting europe “at an inflection point” similar to 1918, 1945 and 1989.

“In the past three years, the world has changed more than in the past 30 years together,” he says.

“We can get it more or less right, or we can even sort of just try to let it happen.

For me, the choice is very simple.

We either have a multi lateral world with rules and strong international institutions, and an order, or we have a multi polar world, which is disorderly and based on transactions and deals.”

He warns that “if we do not end up with a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, we will end up in a very disorderly and transactional world.”

Kallas and Kubilius were also asked by an FT reporter about the paper’s story (£) on exclusion of most non-EU partners, except for the likes of Norway and Ukraine, from the scheme, potentially closing the path for the US, the UK, and Turkey to be involved.

They both appeared to signal some flexibility with “partnership agreements” and with third-country entities through companies “established in the European Union.”

“Nobody is excluded,” Kubilius insisted.

Kallas, who visited the UK yesterday, addressed the UK example in detail, saying that there were talks about a defence and security partnership with the UK, and she was hoping “to have results” in time by the EU-UK summit in May.

“But of course, like you know, it is related to member states and also different worries,” she added.

The talks were previously held up by disagreements in other areas.

Kallas stressed that maintaining EU unity was central to the proposal.

A number of countries – most notably, France – are understood to have been pushing for excluding non-EU countries in a bid to maximise the use of funds on spending with EU companies.

In his comments, Kubilius talked about the EU’s need to respond to rising threat from Russia, as a number of intelligence services from EU member states raised concerns about Moscow’s plans to test the Article 5 of Nato “before 2030.”

“That is why we need to have a road map for readiness by 2030, because we need to act big,” he said.

He said the EU wanted to close its capability gaps “not only having in mind wars of today, but also … of tomorrow.”

But he stressed that the key element was to implement the proposals.

“Putin will not be deterred if we … read the white paper to him. He will be deterred if we … turn the white paper into action and if we … use it to build very real drones, tanks, artillery for our defence,” he said.