President Trump said on Wednesday that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, characterizing it as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war in Ukraine.
It was the first confirmed conversation between the two men during Mr. Trump’s second term, coming as Mr. Trump has made clear to advisers that finding a U.S.-backed end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a priority for his administration.
“We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post.
“We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,” Mr. Trump added. “But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.”
He said he planned to inform President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that both countries planned to “have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.”
Mr. Trump wrote that the U.S. negotiating team would include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, who was in Moscow this week and retrieved the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, who was imprisoned for more than three years in Russia.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that the call lasted almost an hour and a half. He said that the two men agreed to hold a personal meeting and that Mr. Putin invited Mr. Trump to visit Moscow. He also said that in the call, Mr. Putin agreed with Mr. Trump that “the time has come for our countries to work together.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to say whether he had spoken to Mr. Putin before Wednesday, although individuals who would know of such a call in the U.S. government were not aware of one, according to people briefed on the president’s conversations.
Mr. Trump has often made admiring remarks about the Russian president, whom he called a “genius” after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But in the first week of Mr. Trump’s second term, he was more critical, saying the Russian president should not have invaded Ukraine.
“He can’t be thrilled; he’s not doing so well,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office hours after he was inaugurated. “Russia is bigger. They have more soldiers to lose, but that’s no way to run a country.”