President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump held a telephone conversation on 4 July, the Kremlin and the White House confirmed, initiating a sequence of high-level contacts that will continue on the margins of the NATO summit in Ankara this week. The call, which Russian officials said lasted nearly an hour and a half and was requested by Washington, was followed by a separate discussion between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski. Both Moscow and Kyiv now describe a real possibility of ending the war if the United States maintains an active mediation role, and the Kremlin stated that the two presidents “understand that their contacts will continue in the near future.”

Viewed from Moscow, the exchange provided what spokesman Dmitry Peskov called “a good opportunity to convey our position to the US president from the first person.” The Kremlin readout stressed that Putin reiterated his readiness for a diplomatic solution but insisted on conditions previously laid out by Russia, while accusing Ukraine and its European allies of prolonging the conflict. Peskov, briefing journalists on 6 July, described Trump’s stance on the war as “consistent” and said the American leader is “open to listening to the information that Putin conveys to him.” He declined to characterise Trump’s reaction to Russia’s claims of Ukrainian and European escalation, referring the question to the White House. Russian officials also noted that Putin used the occasion of American Independence Day to remind Washington of what he termed Russia’s contribution to the formation of US statehood.

In Kyiv, Zelenski’s office reported that his conversation with Trump covered the battlefield situation and that the Ukrainian president sees a genuine chance to stop the fighting if the United States remains engaged. The diplomatic activity unfolds against a backdrop of continued combat: Russian-installed authorities in Crimea reported one dead and two wounded in a Ukrainian bombardment, while Kyiv confirmed it is intensifying strikes on strategic targets in the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. The Kremlin, for its part, asserted that Russian forces are advancing in eastern Ukraine, a claim Kyiv rejects. European capitals, which have largely been sidelined in this round of direct US-Russia exchanges, are watching the Ankara summit closely for any shift in Washington’s posture that might affect the cohesion of Western military and financial support for Ukraine.

The immediate next step is a bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelenski on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey on 7–8 July. The White House has confirmed the encounter, and Reuters reported that Trump intends to speak again with Putin after that meeting. The choice of Ankara as the venue adds a layer of complexity: Turkey, a NATO member that has maintained working relationships with both Moscow and Kyiv, has previously hosted ceasefire talks and facilitated the Black Sea grain initiative. For now, the dossier remains in a phase of exploratory diplomacy, with no announced change in the fundamental negotiating positions of either side. The sequence of calls and the planned Trump-Zelenski meeting suggest that Washington is testing whether direct presidential engagement can unlock a process that has been deadlocked since the early months of the invasion.