Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin hold one-hour call to discuss Ukraine peace deal after US envoy visits

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone for one hour on September 8, their first direct conversation following a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war. The call came just days after Trump’s envoys visited both Moscow and Kyiv with a revised peace proposal in hand. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov described the conversation as “constructive and quite candid.” What the envoys brought to the table The phone call was a follow-up to meetings held September 5 and 6, when Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner split duties across rival capitals. Witkoff sat down with Putin in Moscow on September 5, while Kushner met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv the following day. Both carried updated versions of a 27-point peace plan. The document represented the latest iteration of Washington’s attempt to broker a resolution, though the specifics of its contents remain closely held. Russia rejected proposals for a broader air truce, agreeing only to a temporary three-day cessation of strikes, limited to the window during which the American envoys were physically present in the region. Zelenskyy ca...