U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin told him “very strong­ly” in a phone call Wednes­day that he will re­spond to Ukraine’s week­end drone at­tack on Russ­ian air­fields.

The U.S. pres­i­dent said in a so­cial me­dia post that “It was a good con­ver­sa­tion, but not a con­ver­sa­tion that will lead to im­me­di­ate Peace.”

The call that last­ed for an hour and 15 min­utes was Trump’s first known with Putin since May 19.

Trump said he and Putin al­so dis­cussed Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram.

***THIS IS A BREAK­ING NEWS UP­DATE. AP’s ear­li­er sto­ry fol­lows be­low***

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy on Wednes­day dis­missed Rus­sia’s cease­fire pro­pos­al as “an ul­ti­ma­tum” and re­newed his call for di­rect talks with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin to break the dead­lock over the war, which has dragged on for near­ly 3½ years.

Putin, how­ev­er, showed no will­ing­ness to meet with Ze­len­skyy, ex­press­ing anger Wednes­day about what he said were Ukraine’s re­cent “ter­ror­ist acts” on Russ­ian rail lines in the Kursk and Bryan­sk re­gions on the coun­tries’ bor­der.

“How can any such (sum­mit) meet­ings be con­duct­ed in such cir­cum­stances? What shall we talk about?” Putin asked in a video call with top Russ­ian of­fi­cials.

He ac­cused Ukraine of seek­ing a truce on­ly to re­plen­ish its stock­piles of West­ern arms, re­cruit more sol­diers and pre­pare new at­tacks like those in Kursk and Bryan­sk.

Both sides ex­changed mem­o­ran­dums set­ting out their con­di­tions for a cease­fire for dis­cus­sion at Mon­day’s di­rect peace talks be­tween del­e­ga­tions in Is­tan­bul, their sec­ond meet­ing in just over two weeks. Ze­len­skyy had pre­vi­ous­ly chal­lenged Putin to meet him in Turkey, but Putin stayed away.

Rus­sia and Ukraine have es­tab­lished red lines that make a quick deal un­like­ly, de­spite a U.S.-led in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­mat­ic push to stop the fight­ing. The Krem­lin’s Is­tan­bul pro­pos­al con­tained a list of de­mands that Kyiv and its West­ern al­lies see as non­starters.

‘This doc­u­ment looks like spam’

Ze­len­skyy said that the sec­ond round of talks in Is­tan­bul was no dif­fer­ent from the first meet­ing on May 16. Ze­len­skyy de­scribed the lat­est ne­go­ti­a­tions in Is­tan­bul as “a po­lit­i­cal per­for­mance” and “ar­ti­fi­cial diplo­ma­cy” de­signed to stall for time, de­lay sanc­tions and con­vince the Unit­ed States that Rus­sia is en­gaged in di­a­logue.

“The same ul­ti­ma­tums they voiced back then — now they just put them on pa­per ... Hon­est­ly, this doc­u­ment looks like spam. It’s spam meant to flood us and cre­ate the im­pres­sion that they’re do­ing some­thing,” Ze­len­skyy said in his first re­ac­tion to the Russ­ian doc­u­ment.

He added that the 2025 talks in Is­tan­bul car­ry “the same con­tent and spir­it” as the fruit­less ne­go­ti­a­tions held in the Turk­ish city in the ear­ly days of the war.

The Ukrain­ian leader said that he sees lit­tle val­ue in con­tin­u­ing talks at the cur­rent lev­el of del­e­ga­tions. De­fense Min­is­ter Rustem Umerov led the Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion in Is­tan­bul, while Vladimir Medin­sky, an aide to Putin, head­ed the Russ­ian team.

Ze­len­skyy said he wants a cease­fire with Rus­sia be­fore a pos­si­ble sum­mit meet­ing with Putin, pos­si­bly al­so in­clud­ing U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, in an ef­fort to re­move ob­sta­cles to a peace set­tle­ment. The U.S. has led a re­cent diplo­mat­ic push to stop the full-scale in­va­sion, which be­gan on Feb. 24, 2022.

“We are propos­ing … a cease­fire be­fore a lead­ers’ sum­mit,” with the U.S. act­ing as a me­di­a­tor, Ze­len­skyy told a me­dia brief­ing in Kyiv.

“Why a cease­fire be­fore the lead­ers’ meet­ing? Be­cause if we meet and there is no mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing, no will­ing­ness or vi­sion on how to end this, then the cease­fire would end that same day. But if we see readi­ness to con­tin­ue the di­a­logue and take re­al steps to­ward de-es­ca­la­tion, then the cease­fire would be ex­tend­ed with U.S. me­di­a­tion guar­an­tees,” he said.

Ukraine is ready to meet at any time from next Mon­day at a venue such as Is­tan­bul, the Vat­i­can or Switzer­land, Ze­len­skyy said.

U.S. de­fense sec­re­tary stays away

A sec­ond round of peace talks on Mon­day be­tween Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tions in Is­tan­bul last­ed just over an hour and made no progress on end­ing the war. They agreed on­ly to swap thou­sands of their dead and se­ri­ous­ly wound­ed troops.

Al­so, a new pris­on­er ex­change with Rus­sia could take place over the week­end, Ze­len­skyy said.

The U.S. has shown signs of dis­tanc­ing it­self from the con­flict.

De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth skipped a meet­ing in Brus­sels on Wednes­day of an in­ter­na­tion­al group co­or­di­nat­ing mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine. It was the first time Amer­i­ca’s Pen­ta­gon chief didn’t at­tend along­side 50 oth­er de­fense lead­ers since the U.S. cre­at­ed the group three years ago.

An analy­sis pub­lished Tues­day by the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, a Wash­ing­ton think tank, said the Krem­lin is hop­ing for U.S. dis­en­gage­ment while avoid­ing fur­ther sanc­tions.

“With­out se­ri­ous pain, Putin will con­tin­ue to drag the peace talks out, keep fight­ing, and wait for the Unit­ed States to walk away,” it said.

In tan­dem with the talks, both sides have kept up of­fen­sive mil­i­tary ac­tions along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line and car­ried out deep strikes.

Ukraine’s Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice gave more de­tails Wednes­day about its spec­tac­u­lar week­end drone strike on Russ­ian air bases, which it claimed de­stroyed or dam­aged 41 Russ­ian air­craft, in­clud­ing strate­gic bombers.

The agency claimed the planes struck in­clud­ed A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22, Tu-160, An-12, and Il-78 air­craft, adding that ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence helped guide the drones thou­sands of kilo­me­ters (miles) from Ukraine.

It al­so said it set off an ex­plo­sion on Tues­day on the seabed be­neath the Kerch Bridge, a vi­tal trans­port link be­tween Rus­sia and il­le­gal­ly an­nexed Crimea, claim­ing it caused dam­age to the struc­ture.

But Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said Wednes­day that there was no dam­age.

Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said Wednes­day that its troops have tak­en con­trol of an­oth­er vil­lage in Ukraine’s north­ern Sumy re­gion, on the bor­der with Rus­sia. Putin an­nounced on May 22 that Russ­ian troops aim to cre­ate a buffer zone that might help pre­vent Ukrain­ian cross-bor­der at­tacks. Since then, Rus­sia’s Min­istry of De­fense claims its forces have tak­en con­trol of nine Sumy vil­lages. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by HAN­NA ARHI­RO­VA and MICHELLE L. PRICE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Il­lia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine and Katie Marie Davies in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land con­tributed to this re­port.