Kathrine Frich
They talked for an hour and a half
Ending a long phone call with an old friend can take several tries.
In high-stakes world politics, though, conversations are usually brief and strictly business.
A recent late-week exchange between two powerful capitals took a very different turn.
Nobody hung up
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin got along so well during a 90-minute phone call on Friday that neither man wanted to end it first, the Daily Express reported. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov described the lengthy chat between the US and Russian leaders as “very substantive and friendly”.
When the hour-and-a-half conversation finally wrapped up, the two presidents put their phones down together. “Neither wanted to be the first to hang up. They hung up simultaneously, literally at the same time,” Ushakov claimed, according to the Daily Express.
While Moscow said the talk mostly covered ways to stop the war in Ukraine, it also produced a surprise energy deal. To help lower pump prices ahead of America’s midterm elections, Russia agreed to ship diesel to US and global markets.
Fury in Kyiv
Soon after the call, Washington temporarily lifted trade bans on Russian fuel exports, which means American buyers can legally bring in Moscow’s diesel for a limited time. That sudden shift sparked immediate anger in Ukraine, the Daily Express noted, where officials worry the fresh cash will fund Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the move as a “weak decision” and “an investment in a war that must be ended”. At the same time, the US president ramped up his attacks on the Ukrainian leader and blamed Kyiv’s strikes on Russian oil refineries for driving up American fuel costs.
“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump told reporters, as quoted by the Daily Express.
Despite the warm tone on the phone, the two presidents made no real progress toward peace. According to the Daily Express, Ushakov noted that Putin brushed off the idea of restarting three-way peace talks anytime soon, even as American, European, and Ukrainian officials meet separately to draft a truce plan.
