The Trump-Putin phone call gave the Kremlin leader a chance to pivot away from the war in Ukraine

They talked about the fighting in Ukraine, of course. But the U.S. and Russian presidents also chatted about improving relations between Washington and Moscow, peace in the Middle East, global security and even hockey games.

During the more than two-hour chat — the longest such call between the countries’ leaders in years — Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin covered a range of topics. And importantly for Putin, the conversation gave him a chance to pivot away from the war in Ukraine and engage more broadly about global issues, drawing a line under Washington’s past efforts to cast him as an international pariah.

Tuesday’s phone call appeared to reflect both leaders’ interest in mending the U.S.-Russian ties that have plummeted to their lowest point since the Cold War amid the 3-year-old conflict in Ukraine. The Kremlin and the state-controlled Russian media praised it as a long-sought launch of an equal dialogue between the two nuclear superpowers.

While both the White House and the Kremlin cast the discussion as a key step toward peace in Ukraine, Putin’s uncompromising demands are making a truce elusive.

Seeking to cultivate warm ties with Washington, Putin accepted a halt on strikes on energy infrastructure while avoiding an outright rejection of Trump’s 30-day ceasefire. The Kremlin leader linked it to a halt in Western arms supplies and a freeze on Kyiv’s mobilization effort -– conditions that Ukraine and its allies firmly reject.

Unlike Kyiv, which accepted Trump’s ceasefire offer amid a series of battlefield setbacks, Putin appears to have little interest in a quick cessation of hostilities, with Russian forces firmly holding the initiative on the battlefield.

Ukraine is on the verge of completely losing its foothold in Russia’s Kursk region, where its forces are clinging to a sliver of land along the border after their surprise incursion in August 2024. Russia’s offensive shattered Kyiv’s hopes of exchanging its gains in Kursk for some of the territory Moscow captured elsewhere in Ukraine.