Trump talk of dividing assets prompts concern before his call with Putin

President Donald Trump said the United States and Russia are already talking about dividing “assets” as part of a push to end the fighting in Ukraine, the latest sign that he may be preparing to sacrifice Kyiv’s interests when he speaks with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

One objective of the call is expected to be getting the Russian president to agree to a 30-day ceasefire that Trump proposed this month and Ukraine has agreed to. Putin has been noncommittal so far, saying he accepted the idea in principle but wants certain conditions to be met.

“Tomorrow morning I will be speaking to President Putin concerning the War in Ukraine,” Trump said Monday evening in a social media post. “Many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to, but much remains.”

Those remarks, along with Trump’s comments to reporters Sunday night that the two sides were already talking about how to divide assets, suggest that many decisions have already been made — with or without Ukraine.

Kyiv and its European allies are worried that Trump will try to force them into a deal on Russia’s terms, leaving Ukraine weakened and vulnerable to the Kremlin in the future. In addition to the ceasefire, the call on Tuesday — Trump and Putin’s second since the U.S. leader’s inauguration for his current term — is likely to touch on wider commercial interests and a possible in-person summit between the two leaders as the White House seeks to reset ties with Moscow.

Despite Putin’s failure to commit publicly to the 30-day truce plan agreed on last week by U.S. and Ukrainian officials, Trump and his team have expressed optimism about the prospects of advancing a ceasefire that would stop the fighting along a border as long as 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers).

But the hints so far have Trump’s critics concerned that Trump — who promised in his campaign to end the war in short order, perhaps even before he returned to the White House — may offer concessions to Russia without Ukraine’s consent, putting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a perilous position.

“The worst case from a Ukrainian perspective would be that Trump is convinced by Putin that these Russian claims are legitimate and acceptable and then puts pressure on Ukraine to accept them,” said Ann Marie Dailey, a policy researcher on Russia and military issues at RAND. Because Trump’s “primary goal is just ending the fighting, I think it is very possible that he would pressure Ukraine to give up certain parts of its land or certain access to economic or industrial facilities in order to attain peace.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Trump in a statement “not to be fooled by Vladimir Putin’s false flattery or manipulative tactics.”

White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Putin on March 13 in an effort to get him to sign on to the outline of the 30-day truce agreed to by the U.S. and Ukraine earlier in the week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, characterized his own talks with the Russian president as “positive” on Sunday.

Details of the U.S.-Russia talks have been sketchy so far. But Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night, said the two sides were talking about “dividing up certain assets” and that includes power plants — a reference to the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

“We’ll be talking about power plants,” Trump said. “That’s a big question, but I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia.”

Russian securities

In a sign of potential economic outreach, Putin allowed some international funds including American ones to sell Russian securities. In a presidential decree, Putin let the U.S.-registered 683 Capital Partners LP buy securities of Russian companies that were owned by about a dozen western asset-management and hedge funds. Franklin Advisers Inc., Templeton Asset Management Ltd. and Baillie Gifford Overseas Ltd. were among funds that received the right to sell assets.

But the Russian leader has repeatedly brushed aside calls for a quick halt to the war he started, saying he seeks a more durable agreement while insisting on a raft of conditions that would be difficult for Kyiv to accept.

That’s been viewed by Ukrainian and some European officials as a sign that he’s playing for time — and that he may not be negotiating in good faith. Putin’s forces, meanwhile, continue to make battlefield gains, including pushing Ukrainian forces back from most of the parts of Russia’s Kursk region that they’d seized last year and had hoped to keep as a bargaining chip for peace talks.

“Ukraine is ready for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire,” Zelenskyy wrote on X after speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday. “However, for its implementation, Russia must stop setting conditions.”

Moscow has made demands that include retaining the land Russian forces have seized in Ukraine, while capping the size of Ukraine’s military and curbing the flows of Western military aid.

Russia has also signaled that Ukraine’s aspiration for eventual membership in the NATO military alliance would be a red line, a position Trump has endorsed. But it’s unclear how such a demand could be codified in an agreement, given that it would be a goal Ukraine would have to renounce, along with all 32 members of the military alliance.

European leaders have made no secret of their concern that Trump may concede on points that could weaken both Ukraine and Europe’s security in a one-on-one exchange with Putin.

Trump should tell Putin to accept the ceasefire “or it will be a worse deal tomorrow and then even worse the day after tomorrow,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys told Bloomberg in an interview at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday.

“There is no interest of Russia to achieve the agreement and there is no sign they will step back on their demands,” he said.

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