Trump Says End of Ukraine War May Be Closer Than People Realize

President Donald Trump said on July 6 that a solution to the war in Ukraine is “getting closer than people realize,” as he prepares to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey.Trump said he had a “good call” over the weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Kremlin aide said the call was “constructive” and lasted 85 minutes.“This is one that I think we’re getting much closer than people realize. And President Putin wants it to end. I will tell you that very strongly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.“And President Zelenskyy actually wants it to end now. And we’re going to be going to NATO, and we’re going to be talking about it, and I think we’re going to get it. I think we’re going to get it ended. It’s been a terrible situation.”Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, referring to the phone call with Putin, wrote in a statement on July 5, “The U.S. president reaffirmed his readiness to facilitate an early termination of the hostilities and the search for peaceful solutions to the crisis.”Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the U.S. position on how to end the conflict remained unchanged.Peskov said Trump and Putin agreed to talk again “in the near future.”Kremlin Says Trump Is ‘Consistent’“You know, President Trump, the U.S. president, has a fairly consistent stance, and all these fabrications about him supposedly changing his views like a weather vane are, of course, untrue,” Peskov said.“He is consistent and confident in his understanding of what is happening, but, most importantly, he is open to listening to the information that is conveyed to him by Putin.”But in an interview with the Financial Times, Zelenskyy said he believed Trump was viewing the conflict in a new light in view of recent Ukrainian successes with long-range drone attacks inside Russian territory.On July 7, Zelenskyy posted part of the interview on X and wrote that Putin is beginning to “grasp the reality of the situation” now that Ukrainian drones are striking at Moscow and St. Petersburg.“When not one hundred drones but a thousand start reaching Moscow, and when he feels it and sees it, he will be advised to move somewhere beyond the Urals,” Zelenskyy wrote, referring to a mountain range beyond which the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin moved his armaments plants during World War II.“And then there are the elites. Where do the Russian elites live? Moscow and St. Petersburg—the two major cities. Those places will be reached, because that is where they make the decisions to kill us.”Zelenskyy said his own phone conversation with Trump over the weekend was “very good.”He told the Financial Times that Trump had told him that Ukraine “is doing very well” with its long-range drone campaign.Putin said on June 28 that Moscow was not interested in negotiations with Zelenskyy and was intent on completing its war aims and seizing four Ukrainian regions.A firefighter works at a site of Russian missile and drone strikes, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 6, 2026. Viacheslav Ratynskyi/ReutersTrump is scheduled to meet with Zelenskyy on July 7 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in the Turkish capital, Ankara.28 Killed in Overnight AttacksRussia hit Kyiv and the surrounding region with missiles and drones overnight, which Ukrainian authorities say killed at least 28 people.But Ukraine has been taking the drone war to Russia in recent weeks.Ukrainian drone attacks on June 16 and 18 hit targets across Russia, including the main oil refinery serving Moscow, which is run by state-run company Gazprom Neft.After the second attack, flames and plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the refinery, near the suburb of Kapotnya.On June 28, Putin said the Ukrainian attacks were “aimed at diverting our attention and forces from achieving the main objectives—the complete liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya.”The Russian president has previously said that Russia wants to take permanent ownership of four regions, or oblasts, in southern and eastern Ukraine—Luhansk and Donetsk (which together are known as the Donbas) and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which he has taken to referring to as “Novorossiya.”The term Novorossiya, or “New Russia,” dates back to the Tsarist period, when it was coined to refer to Crimea and southern Ukraine after Russia seized those areas from the Ottoman Empire.Russia formally annexed all four regions in October 2022, but as of July 7, 2026, it still does not control their whole territory militarily.Reuters contributed to this report.