Trump’s plan to discuss Ukraine’s power plants with Putin prompts questions

President Donald Trump addresses questions aboard Air Force One, March 16 2025. Trump said negotiations over a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal had continued over the weekend and that discussions had included “dividing up certain assets.” (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times)

By Ivan Nechepurenko and Constant Méheut

The Kremlin said Monday that preparations were underway for a phone call between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, as questions swirled over Trump’s comments suggesting that power plants and “dividing up” Ukrainian assets were on the agenda.

The highly anticipated phone call, scheduled for Tuesday, will be the first known conversation between the two leaders since Ukraine agreed to support a U.S.-backed monthlong ceasefire, as long as Russia does the same. While Trump has unequivocally stated his desire to broker some sort of truce as quickly as possible, Putin seems to be seeking to exploit the moment to win more concessions.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening, Trump said he expected to discuss territorial issues with Putin as well as the fate of Ukrainian power plants. He also noted that there had already been discussions about “dividing up certain assets.”

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” Trump said. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”

The Kremlin’s spokesperson confirmed Monday that a call was expected to take place the following day but declined to disclose the conversation topics when asked whether Ukrainian power plants would be discussed.

“We never get ahead of things,” said the spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, since in Moscow’s “opinion the contents of conversations between the two leaders cannot be discussed a priori.”

Putin has not yet agreed to the 30-day ceasefire that U.S. officials proposed after talks with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has said the idea was “the right one and we definitely support it” — but laid out numerous conditions that could delay or derail any truce.

“There are questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners,” he said at a news conference Thursday.

Those remarks came just before Putin met with Steve Witkoff, who serves as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. But he has been involved in the peace talks over Ukraine and other discussions about restoring ties between Moscow and Washington.

Witkoff told CNN on Sunday that his meeting with Russia’s leader had lasted three to four hours. He declined to share the specifics of their conversation, but said it went well and that the two sides had “narrowed the differences between them.”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has accused Putin of stalling while Russia’s army advances on the battlefield to strengthen his hand in talks with the Trump administration about pausing the hostilities.

Moscow’s push to drive out Ukrainian troops from most of the Kursk region of Russia in recent days has deprived Ukraine of an important bargaining chip in any potential negotiations.

With its advance in Kursk, Russia can show Trump that it holds the momentum on the battlefield. Battlefield maps compiled by both Russian and Western groups analyzing combat footage and satellite images show that Russian forces have already crossed into Ukraine’s Sumy region from Kursk, in what analysts say may be an effort to flank and encircle the remaining Ukrainian troops in Kursk or open a new front in the war.

Zelenskyy has accused Russia of preparing to mount a larger offensive into the Sumy region, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people. Those actions, he said, indicated that Putin was not interested in peace.

Since the U.S. proposal for a ceasefire, Zelenskyy said Sunday night, “Russia stole almost another week — a week of war that only Russia wants.”

“We will do everything to further intensify diplomacy. We will do everything to make diplomacy effective,” he wrote on social media.

The reference to “power plants” by Trump was the latest indication that they might factor into any such diplomacy around a ceasefire. While the president did not elaborate, his comments came on the same day Witkoff mentioned a “nuclear reactor” in an interview with CBS News.

That appeared be a reference to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia seized early in the war and still controls.

The six-reactor plant, Europe’s largest, has not supplied power to Ukraine’s grid since its capture. Its proximity to front-line fighting has long raised concerns about the risk of a radiological disaster.

Ukraine has repeatedly demanded Russian forces leave the power plant in order to reduce the risk of a nuclear accident and ease the country’s power shortages. But that possibility has grown increasingly unlikely as Russia strengthens its hold on occupied territories in Ukraine.

Viktoria Hryb, the head of the Ukrainian parliament’s subcommittee on energy security, said she was “a little surprised that the question of the plant emerged” in the remarks by Trump and Witkoff.

“Ukraine wants it back,” she said, but it isn’t clear why Russia would give it up.

The power plant sits near the Dnieper River in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia has officially annexed despite controlling only part of its territory.

Surrendering it would mean ceding territory Russia considers its own. It would also give Ukraine’s troops a foothold in a Russian-controlled area that has been relatively protected from Ukrainian attacks thanks to the natural barrier of the large Dnieper River.

At the same time, energy experts say, the nuclear plant is in poor condition after three years of war and restoring full operations would require a lot of time and investment from Russia. That could mean Russia might see an incentive to try to trade it for something else, such as the easing of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, experts say.

Victoria Voytsitska, a former lawmaker and senior member of the Ukrainian parliament’s energy committee, noted that Moscow had long sought to resume oil and gas exports to Western countries. Those exports, a crucial source of revenue for Russia’s government, largely stopped after the war began, as European countries moved to wean themselves off Russian energy supplies and imposed sanctions on Russian energy companies.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.