Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed Wednesday to a partial ceasefire with Russia focused on “energy and other civilian infrastructure.” Zelensky, who spoke after an hour-long phone call with President Donald Trump, said it is a first step in what the Ukrainian leader said he hoped would be “lasting peace” more than three years after his country was invaded by Moscow.
Zelensky agrees to partial ceasefire after conversation with Trump
The 30-day ceasefire would be the most concrete result yet of Trump’s effort to end the war in Ukraine.
March 19, 2025
The 30-day ceasefire would be the most concrete result yet of Trump’s effort to end the war in Ukraine. It comes a day after Trump had a lengthy conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an attempt to broker a deal and also to restore broader relations with the Kremlin, which have been mostly frozen since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The conversation between Trump and Zelensky and the timing was just the most recent evidence of how Ukraine has been relegated to the back seat in talks about its future. It came amid questions about whether Putin would live up to the commitments he made to Trump to stop strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure — pledges that fell short of the full ceasefire that Trump was originally seeking.
“Just completed a very good telephone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs. We are very much on track.”
Trump said the call lasted an hour.
“We believe that together with America, with President Trump, and under American leadership, lasting peace can be achieved this year,” Zelensky wrote in a post on X. “One of the first steps toward fully ending the war could be ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure. I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it.”
He said that he hoped that the ceasefire could broaden.
Zelensky has been struggling to navigate a White House that has at times been openly hostile to him and friendlier to Putin. Trump last month called the democratically elected Zelensky a “dictator” and told him that “you don’t have the cards right now.” White House officials continued their deferential approach to Putin on Wednesday, praising him for his willingness to discuss peace in Ukraine.
Still, Trump and other senior White House officials appeared Wednesday to have softened their tone toward Zelensky and Kyiv after weeks of tough words for the Ukrainian leader. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Washington plans to continue to supply Kyiv with military and intelligence assistance following a days-long pause earlier this month, despite Kremlin requests for a halt.
Leavitt also said that after Zelensky asked for additional air defense systems, especially the powerful U.S.-made Patriot systems, Trump “agreed to work with him to find what was available, particularly in Europe.”
She also expressed a U.S. interest in owning and operating Ukrainian nuclear power plants, saying that the two leaders had discussed the issue during their Wednesday call.
Ukraine and Russia swapped 175 prisoners on Wednesday, another element of Tuesday’s discussion with Russia.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff dismissed Ukrainian reports that Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure continued overnight despite Putin’s claimed order to halt fire on those targets.
“President Putin issued an order within 10 minutes of his call with the president directing Russian forces not to be attacking any Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” Witkoff told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. “Any attacks that happened last night would have happened before that order was given. 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.”
Zelensky said Wednesday that there were extensive Russian attacks overnight, including on energy infrastructure. Authorities said that one strike hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, damaging the city’s electricity grid. The regional prosecutor’s office said that the strike took place at 8:50 p.m. local time, more than two hours after the call ended. Regional police said that power lines and a gas pipeline were hit in the strike. But it wasn’t immediately clear whether they were deliberately targeted.
Russia’s broader attack on Ukraine continued after the call between Trump and Putin. Ukrainian authorities said 145 Russian drones attacked in the hours after the phone call. The attacks hit two hospitals in Ukraine’s Sumy region and destroyed nine homes in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Ukraine, meanwhile, hit an oil depot in Russia’s Krasnodar region, igniting a fire that more than 170 firefighters were dispatched to get under control in what the Russian Defense Ministry called a disruption of “peace initiatives.” Ukrainian leaders weren’t formally briefed on the Trump-Putin call until Wednesday.
Top officials in Kyiv expressed skepticism about whether Putin would live up to his side of the bargain.
“After the announcement of an ‘air truce,’ we didn’t give our air defense crews a break — we simply watched the clock. Less than an hour after #Putin supposedly agreed not to strike Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and had allegedly ‘issued the relevant orders,’ he attacked the energy infrastructure in eastern Ukraine,” Zelensky adviser Mikhailo Podolyak wrote on X. “The response to President #Trump’s peace initiatives was the arrival of 150 Shahed drones, built by Russians using Iranian blueprints, targeting civilian infrastructure.”
Johnson reported from Kyiv. Serhiy Morgunov in Stuttgart, Germany and Robyn Dixon in Riga, Latvia contributed to this report.