London – President Donald Trump said he spoke with Russian President Putin on Wednesday, describing his call as “good” but “not a conversation that leads to immediate peace.”
In a publication about Truth Social, Trump said the leaders discussed the operation of large -scale drones of Ukraine that attacked Russian military airfields on Sunday and “other attacks” during their call of approximately 65 minutes.
“President Putin said, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on aerodromes,” Trump said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on May 28, 2025 and President Donald Trump in Washington, on April 20, 2025.
AP/AFP through Getty Images
With the peace of Ukraine-Russia in the USA.
Trump returned to office in January, promised to end the war in 24 hours. But months of failed conversations, with kyiv and Moscow, clearly still very separated in their peace demands, they have left the president already publicly frustrated.
Trump has threatened both Ukraine with the withdrawal of all the aid and Russia with more sanctions, with punishment if their peace efforts fail. Both Ukraine and Russia have tried to frame the other and the main impediment of a peace agreement.
Ukraine aligned with Trump’s appeal in May of a high fire of 30 days, a proposal that Putin has rejected. In the following weeks, Zelenskyy has pressed Trump to meet Russia’s obstacing with sanctions.
Firefighters work on the site of the Russian unmanned aircraft strike in Jharkiv, Ukraine, on June 4, 2025.
Vitaliii Hnidyi/Reuters
After Monday’s conversations, which lasted just over an hour, Kyiv embarked on a renewed impulse.
“I want to thank all Americans, to all Europeans who support this approach to press Russia in La Paz, it is extremely important,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram on Tuesday night, after the last round of mortal attacks of Russian drones and missile Bomber de la Bombero Russia and Kerch Stitch Bridge.
“Putin does not change his behavior when he does not fear the consequences of his actions,” Zelenskyy added. “Russia must feel what war really means. Russia must endure the losses of war. They should really feel that continuing the war will have devastating consequences for them.”
The two parties accepted more exchanges of prisoners during the last Conversations of Istanbul. But both the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Andrii Sybiha and Andriy Yermak, the influential head of the Zelenskyy presidential office, backed away the idea that the negotiations transferred the needle to a highly durable fire agreement.
Yermak said in a publication to the social networks that he spoke with Trump Steve Witkoff’s special envoy about the conversations, saying: “Russia’s position remains not constructive.”
“I emphasized that Russia is stagnating and manipulating the negotiation process in an attempt to avoid US sanctions and has no genuine intention to cease hostilities,” said Yermak. “Only strong sanctions can force Russia to participate in serious negotiations.
Sybiha said that Russia “has not responded to our document that describes the vision of Ukraine to end the war”, in a publication on X summarizing the official conclusions of Ukraine of the second round of conversations.
“Instead of responding to our constructive proposals in Istanbul, the Russian side passed a set of old ultimatums that do not move the situation closer to true peace,” he said.
“This contradicts the previous promises of Russia, even to the United States, which would present something realistic and feasible this week in Istanbul,” added Sybiha, also asking for new US sanctions to Moscow.
The Ukrainian military prepare to fire a multi-graduated rocket launch system of BM-21 towards Russian troops in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, on June 3, 2025.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Reuters
Trump also faces pressure at home. Republican senator Lindsey Graham, influential for a long time in the advice of the president’s foreign policy, is among those who promote a draft law of sanctions through the Senate that would slapped 500% of tariffs on any country that bought the energy products of Moscow.
On Sunday, after a visit to kyiv with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, Graham wrote in X: “Russia indiscriminately kills men, women and children. It is time for the world to act decisively against Russia’s aggression by holding China and others responsible for buying cheap Russian oil who underpin the Putin war machine.”
The Kremlin urged patience. “It would be a mistake to expect immediate decisions or advances here,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday journalists about the last conversations. “But the work is ongoing. Certain agreements were reached in Istanbul, and are important. In fact, first, these are people. These agreements will be implemented.”
But Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and prime minister who now served as vice president of the country’s Security Council, gave a darker reading about negotiations. The conversations, wrote in Telegram, “are not intended to achieve a peace commitment based on some imaginary and unrealistic conditions invented by others, but to ensure our rapid victory and complete destruction” of the Zelenskyy government.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday that Tuesday’s explosion at the Kerch Strait Bridge did not cause damage, after the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) was attributed the responsibility of the last attack on the structure.
“Well, there was an explosion, nothing was damaged, the bridge is working, the kyiv regime continues its attempts to attack the objects of the peaceful infrastructure,” Peskov said in an informative session. “The Russian side takes the appropriate precautions.”
The SBU said that the bridge attacked, which links Crimea with the Krasnodar Krai region of Russia and is a prominent symbol of Moscow’s control over the occupied peninsula, with early submarine explosives on Tuesday, in an operation that “lasted several months.”
The SBU said the explosion “severely damaged” the “underwater supports of the docks.” The official bridge account said the structure was “temporarily closed” after the explosion.
This video outlet taken from a brochure footage published by the Ukraine Security Service on June 3, 2025, allegedly shows the explosion of the Kerch narrow bridge that connects Crimea with Russia.
Ukrainian Security Service/AFP V
The long -range attacks that have continued to Trump continued. The Ukraine Air Force reported 95 Russian drones launched into the country during the night, of which 61 were demolished or neutralized. The impacts were recorded in seven locations, said the Air Force.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its forces demolished seven Ukrainian drones during the night.
The United States Embassy in Ukraine issued a security alert on Wednesday warning Americans about the growing intensity of Russian attacks. The embassy urged US citizens to “exercise appropriate caution” and be prepared to “take refuge immediately” if an air alert is announced.
Ellie Kaufman of ABC News, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Nataliia Popova and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
