Vladimir Putin talks on the phone during a charity campaign in the Kremlin, 3 January 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/MIKHAEL KLIMENTYEV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN POOL

US President Donald Trump told European leaders during a phone call on Monday that Vladimir Putin has no intention of ending the war in Ukraine as he believes he is “winning”, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Wednesday.

Citing three unnamed sources familiar with the conversation, the WSJ said Trump made the acknowledgement while speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday, shortly after a call with Putin earlier that day.

However, while Trump now acknowledges what European leaders have “long believed” about Putin, the WSJ said, he is still unwilling to impose further sanctions on Russia over Moscow’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire, instead preferring to “proceed quickly with lower-level talks” between Russia and Ukraine hosted by the Vatican, which could begin in mid-June.

Immediately after Monday’s call, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Moscow and Kyiv would “immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire” and that the Vatican was “very interested” in hosting them.

In a previous call on Sunday with Macron, Merz, Meloni and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday, Trump suggested that he would send US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Keith Kellogg to the Vatican to mediate — but changing his tone and appearing “noncommittal” about the US’ role in any future talks by Monday’s call, the WSJ said.

On Monday, Trump also took issue with some of the Europeans’ insistence that the talks at the Vatican must result in an unconditional ceasefire, telling the leaders he did not like the term “unconditional” — despite using it in a Truth Social post calling for a full 30-day truce earlier this month.

While Trump has repeatedly claimed that Putin wants peace, his private acknowledgement that the Russian leader is not ready to end the war comes amid growing frustration in the White House at a lack of progress on a ceasefire deal.

Amid continued Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities in late April, Trump publicly questioned whether Putin was “tapping” him along before admitting in May that he was “starting to doubt” whether Ukraine would be able to reach a deal with Moscow as Putin was “too busy celebrating the Victory of World War ll”.