President Donald Trump is set to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday about peace in Ukraine as European leaders demanded that the Kremlin accept an immediate ceasefire to halt the region's deadliest conflict since World War Two.
Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly called for an end to the "bloodbath" of Ukraine, which his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
"The subjects of the call will be stopping the 'bloodbath' that is killing, on average, more than 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade," Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.