Russian President Vladimir Putin interrupted an event at the Annual Forum 2025. He stopped the panel and walked off to a call with US President Trump. In a light-hearted moment, he commented that “it is awkward to make Trump wait, he could get offended,” which ended in a spur of laughter and applause from the audience present.
Based on latest reports, the Trump-Putin call however, resulted in no progress at all on efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Held as a response to Russian strikes on Kyiv, a Kremlin aide said the Russian president reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict’s “root causes.”
WOW. Russian President Vladimir Putin abruptly leaves the stage to hop on the phone with President Trump, saying he didn't want to offend Trump by keeping him waiting.
This is what happens when we have a real President. The world respects us.pic.twitter.com/LBzcktAY4G
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 3, 2025
Trump-Putin call
The two leaders did not discuss a recent pause in some US weapons shipments to Kyiv during the nearly hour-long conversation, according to a readout provided by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov. The US attempts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine through diplomacy have largely stalled, and Trump has faced growing calls, even from some Republicans, to increase pressure on Putin to negotiate in earnest.
Within hours of the call’s conclusion, an apparent Russian drone attack sparked a fire in an apartment building in a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said, indicating little change in the trajectory of the conflict.
“I didn’t make any progress with him at all,” Trump told reporters in brief comments at an air base outside Washington, before departing for a campaign-style event in Iowa.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, told reporters in Denmark earlier in the day that he hopes to speak to Trump as soon as Friday about the ongoing pause in some weapons shipments, which was first disclosed earlier this week.
Trump, speaking to reporters said “we haven’t” completely paused the weapons flow but blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the current situation of at-risk US defences.
The diplomatic back-and-forth comes as the U.S. has paused shipments of certain critical weapons to Ukraine due to low stockpiles, sources earlier told Reuters, just as Ukraine faces a Russian summer offensive and increasingly frequent attacks on civilian targets.