President Trump has focused on a limited ceasefire in the Ukraine war as he seeks to get the ball rolling on broader peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
Russian President Vladimir Putin this week rejected a full 30-day ceasefire proposed by the U.S. and backed by Ukraine, but he signaled openness to a narrower truce focused on energy infrastructure, though many questions remain about its terms and implementation.
U.S. officials are expected in Saudi Arabia next week, with reported plans to hold separate meetings with Ukrainian and Russian delegations on Monday to hash out details.
Here’s what each side wants in the talks, and why Trump’s NATO plans are a wild card.
What Trump wants
While Trump has fallen short of his promise to end the war in 24 hours, he can say there is forward movement in the talks.
So far, his strategy has focused on pressuring Ukraine into concessions by leveraging military and intelligence assistance, while offering Putin a choice between economic carrots or sticks.
Economic deals seem to be a priority for Trump in both talks with Ukraine and Russia. In Trump’s call with Putin, he emphasized that improved ties between the two countries “has huge upside,” including geopolitical stability.
Trump has been pressuring Ukraine to sign a mineral extraction deal, and he raised a new idea after a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week: taking ownership of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Zelensky said the discussion focused on Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, which is under Russian occupation, and whether there might be a U.S. role in bringing it back into Ukraine’s hands, perhaps as part of territorial talks.
Trump is reportedly interested in the plant as part of powering the mining industry in Ukraine after the war. He said Friday that contracts are being negotiated over “dividing up the lands” as part of a final peace deal.
Putin declared annexation of four Ukrainian territories, including Zaporizhzhia, despite not having full territorial control and international rejections.
Benjamin Schmitt, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, said the idea of U.S. control of the nuclear plant was problematic for multiple reasons.
“Putin, frankly, is not going to be satisfied with any of that, because his war aims were to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty fully,” he said. “And so the notion that the United States having, let’s say control, if not ownership, in some way over Zaporizhzhia power plant, that would have significant downside risk for any commercial firm that would want to take on that risk.”
What Putin wants
Putin has toned down some of his demands as Trump forces negotiators to the table, Rose Gottemoeller, who served as deputy secretary-general of NATO from 2016 to 2019, said on the “Russian Roulette” podcast hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This includes Putin and his top aides dropping public objections to Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and shifting rhetoric on its earlier war goals of “denazification” in Ukraine, which was coded language for toppling Zelensky in favor of someone more aligned with Russia.
“His objectives have changed, and they’ve been forced to change by the war and the way it has unfolded,” Gottemoeller said.
Putin is still strenuously opposed to Ukraine joining NATO, hosting foreign peacekeeping forces, or officially taking back territory Russia has occupied starting with its 2014 invasion of Crimea.
To the extent that Putin feels motivated to reach a ceasefire, the Russian economy is likely a major motivating factor. Increased Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil and energy facilities have reportedly depressed its petroleum production, at least temporarily, by 10 percent.
And while Russia has largely weathered U.S., European and international sanctions by switching to a wartime economy, it’s unclear how long that strategy is sustainable.
Schmitt, of the University of Pennsylvania, said sanctions on Russia’s energy sector are “definitely having macroeconomic impact on the Russian economy.”
He added that now is the time for stricter enforcement of these sanctions and tightening export controls against energy sector technologies and commercial goods used in military production.
“When it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, we should be doing what Putin understands, which is hard diplomacy, hard power,” he said.
What Zelensky wants
Trump’s proposal for a limited ceasefire on energy and infrastructure matches earlier efforts by Ukraine in talks with Russia over the past year.
“Essentially, what was more-or-less agreed [between Trump and Putin] was a return to two agreements Russia and Ukraine had almost finalized last year but never got over the finish line,” Samuel Charap, senior political scientist with the RAND Corp., posted on social platform X.
This includes talks that were scheduled to take place in August over an energy and power infrastructure ceasefire, which were derailed when Ukraine launched an incursion into the Russian territory of Kursk.
Trump and Zelensky, in a phone call Wednesday, also talked about expanding the limited ceasefire to the Black Sea, a critical waterway for Ukrainian exports and a flashpoint of fighting with Russia.
Ukrainian and Russian officials reportedly reached the final stages of a deal over the Black Sea in March 2024, but Kyiv pulled out.
“I think it’s very canny that the Zelensky government have now bolstered this essentially long-standing proposal for a ceasefire and brought it to the table with the Americans, because that gives it an extra boost,” said Gottemoeller, now a lecturer at the Stanford University Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“Ukrainians have their own very experienced negotiators and are very, I think, very astute about representing their own interests at the negotiating table.”
Zelensky has long said that ongoing security guarantees, ideally involving the U.S. and NATO, are an essential component of any peace deal.
Where Europe stands
Europe, wary of Trump’s unpredictability as a military ally, is increasingly drawing up plans to bolster its own defense industries and aid to Ukraine.
“There’s a lot going on now, a lot of chatter … all this chatter and a fair amount of meetings and activity reflects the Europeans take this seriously,” said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former ambassador to Ukraine.
“This is hard, this is complicated, and it’s going to take time. But there’s no doubt in my mind the trend is towards a more robust defense spending and defense posture by the Europeans.”
But the challenge of getting Europe on the same page over plans to aid Ukraine was thrown into stark relief earlier this week. European Union Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas saw her plan for a $43 billion military aid package to Ukraine falter amid pushback from European leaders.
And an effort to rally $5.4-billion-worth of ammunition failed to materialize.
Still, senior military leaders from more than 30 countries met in England on Thursday to flesh out plans for an international peacekeeping force that could deploy to Ukraine in the event of agreement with Russia.
And French President Emmanuel Macron announced that a coalition of willing nations backing Ukraine would meet in Paris on March 27 — and would include Zelensky.
Trump’s NATO wild card
Trump has drawn rare Republican resistance after reports the Pentagon is planning to withdraw U.S. leadership of NATO’s military command, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The position has been exclusively held by an American in the 75-year history of the alliance, commanding America’s forces in Europe and overseeing the U.S. nuclear posture on the continent.
Trump is deeply critical of alliance members who have yet to increase their defense budget to 2 percent of their gross domestic product, suggesting the U.S. would not act to protect them in case of an attack.
And the president on Friday claimed credit for reviving the alliance by pushing member states to increase their defense spending. And he said NATO’s deterrence factor relied on America’s involvement.
“President Putin will tell you that without the United States he wouldn’t be worried. But he is worried when the United States is involved,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
There is a clear divide among Trump’s allies and advisers over NATO.
While MAGA voices like Donald Trump Jr. and tech billionaire Elon Musk have advocated for a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, more conventional national security voices like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz.
The NATO plans would also set Trump on a collision course with GOP senators who support robust U.S. engagement in the alliance.
Trump largely dodged questions about his plan Friday.
Herbst said the debate showed there are “people of influence in the administration” who “really don’t understand geopolitics and American security.”
“So that’s why even such things are discussed. But I would not assume that because someone has raised this somewhere, that means that this is being given serious consideration by the administration.”
