# Trump-Putin Call (December 28, 2025) The ninth and final Trump-Putin call of 2025, held on a Sunday morning before Trump met [[Volodymyr Zelensky]] at [[Mar-a-Lago]]. The first Trump-Putin call since the October 16 Budapest debacle. Per TASS, this was the longest gap between calls in the second-term Russia channel — more than two months. **Duration:** ~1 hour **Initiator:** Trump-initiated, from Mar-a-Lago ## Readout — Trump / White House Trump posted that the conversation had been "good and very productive." Trump said Russia and Ukraine were "closer than ever" to a peace deal. Following the call, Trump met Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago and projected optimism that the war could be ended in the new year. Trump and Zelensky issued a joint statement after their meeting describing the outlines of a framework: territorial questions to be resolved in subsequent direct talks, security guarantees from a U.S.-European coalition, and a phased ceasefire. ## Readout — Kremlin The Kremlin readout was more specific and disclosed material the U.S. side omitted. Per Yuri Ushakov, Trump and Putin agreed that a temporary ceasefire "will only prolong the conflict and risk a resumption of hostilities." This formulation — that a *temporary* ceasefire would be worse than continued war — is the Russian position dating from at least mid-2024 and is incompatible with the public Ukrainian position that an immediate ceasefire is necessary for any subsequent settlement. The Kremlin also said the leaders had agreed to stand up U.S. and Russian "working groups" on Ukraine settlement specifics and a separate working group on Black Sea shipping arrangements — a substantive bilateral framework that excluded Ukraine. ## Surrounding Context (Russia-Ukraine and Direct Ripples) - **Late November 2025 (Witkoff-Kushner Moscow trip):** [[Steve Witkoff]] and [[Jared Kushner]] traveled to Moscow for the most extensive U.S.-Russia bilateral negotiations of the second term. The visit produced the framework that Russia would present at Geneva talks (early December) and that Trump and Putin discussed on the December 28 call. The framework reportedly required Ukraine to cede Donetsk in full and recognize Russian annexation; Ukraine rejected the framework. - **Early December (Geneva):** U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks in Geneva collapsed after Ukraine refused the Witkoff-Kushner framework. The Ukrainian delegation, led by Andriy Yermak, walked out after the Russian delegation refused to discuss any modification to the territorial demands. Geneva was the first major direct Russia-Ukraine talk since Istanbul (June 2025). - **December 20-22 (Ukrainian energy strikes):** Russia executed one of the largest single-night barrages of the war against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, leaving multiple Ukrainian cities without heat or power in mid-winter. The strikes were widely characterized as designed to coerce Ukrainian acceptance of the territorial framework. - **December 25-27 (Christmas attacks):** Russia continued large-scale strikes on Ukrainian cities through the Christmas period. The pattern — Russian escalation in the run-up to a Trump-Putin call — held. - **December 28 (post-meeting, Mar-a-Lago):** Trump and Zelensky met for several hours. The Ukrainian readout was more guarded than Trump's "closer than ever" framing; Zelensky reportedly told reporters that "thorny issues" remained and that Ukraine could not accept the framework as presented. ## Significance The December 28 call returned the Russia channel to the "very productive" framing without any prior Russian concession on the substantive terms. The two-month gap between calls produced by the Budapest cancellation did not produce a substantive shift in Russian position; instead, Russia continued the military pressure campaign through the late-November and December strikes, and the U.S. side returned to engagement on Russia's preferred terms. The Kremlin's disclosed claim that Trump had agreed a temporary ceasefire would "only prolong the conflict" was the most explicit Russian-side claim to date that the U.S. position had moved toward Russia's preferred framing. The phrase has been a Russian negotiating position for over a year; if Trump endorsed it on the call, it represents a substantive U.S. shift away from Ukraine's "ceasefire-first" position. The Mar-a-Lago meeting with Zelensky later the same day was choreographed to project unity, but the optics of Trump calling Putin first and Zelensky second drew sharp Ukrainian and European criticism. The sequence had become the structural pattern of [[Trump II]] Russia policy. See [[Trump-Putin Calls Timeline]].