(MENAFN) US President Donald Trump claimed this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him Moscow has spent more than a decade trying to resolve the Ukraine conflict peacefully, and that Washington could compel Kiev to accept a negotiated solution.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Ukraine during a lengthy phone call last month, along with the possibility of another in-person meeting in the near future.

“President Putin, I spoke to him two weeks ago, and he said… ‘We’ve been trying to settle that war for ten years. We weren’t able to do it, you got to settle,’” Trump said at the America Business Forum in Miami on Wednesday.

“I got some of these things settled in an hour,” he added, referring to various international conflicts he claims to have resolved since taking office in January.

Following the call, Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky reportedly visited the White House the next day, seeking a supply of US-made Tomahawk missiles to expand Kiev’s long-range strike capabilities against Russia.

Trump, however, said this week that he is “not really” considering providing Tomahawks, suggesting that Kiev and Moscow should be left to “fight out” the conflict.

The US president has long pledged to mediate an end to the Ukraine conflict, which began with the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and escalated further in 2022.

Trump resumed direct communication with Moscow earlier this year, but those talks, along with renewed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, have yet to produce a breakthrough. He has repeatedly expressed frustration, alternately blaming both Moscow and Kiev for the deadlock.

Moscow has consistently said it seeks a lasting resolution rather than a temporary ceasefire, which it claims would allow Kiev and its Western backers to regroup and rearm. Russia insists that any long-term settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the current territorial situation.

Meanwhile, Kiev and its European allies continue to push for increased Western military support while resisting direct diplomatic engagement between Moscow and Washington. Zelensky has even taken credit for blocking plans for a Trump-Putin summit in Budapest, Hungary.

The Kremlin emphasized, however, that both leaders regard the meeting as postponed rather than canceled, noting that neither “wants to meet for the sake of a meeting.”

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