Trump and Zelenskyy in 'positive' phone call

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a "very good telephone call" yesterday, according to Trump, in the first conversation between the men since their disastrous showdown in the White House three weeks ago.

- Shaun Walker, Pjotr Sauer

Zelenskyy described the call as "positive, very substantive, and frank" and said he had signed on to a partial ceasefire that Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin a day earlier.

The White House said Trump had promised to help with a Ukrainian request to source more air defence batteries for Kyiv.

The previous encounter between Trump and Zelenskyy ended in an angry exchange of words between the two presidents and the US vice-president, JD Vance. It marked a low point in US-Ukrainian relations, and spooked other allies, which fear that Washington may be about to abandon Kyiv.

Since then, Zelenskyy has been eager to get relations back on track. Kyiv's readout of yesterday's call thanked Trump multiple times, and Zelenskyy said he had signed on to the ceasefire plan.

"We instructed our teams to resolve technical issues related to implementing and expanding the partial ceasefire," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram after the call.

Previously, Ukrainian and US negotiating teams had agreed on a full ceasefire, but Putin turned that down, suggesting instead pausing mutual strikes on energy infrastructure and a ceasefire in the Black Sea.

Trump, posting on Truth Social, described his talk with Zelenskyy as a "very good telephone call" that lasted about an hour. "Much of the discussion was based on the call made [on Tuesday] with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs. We are very much on track," he wrote, in language that was noticeably less hyperbolic than some of his pronouncements on the conflict.