Trump says Putin on call vowed retaliation for drone strike

Josh Wingrove and Akayla Gardner, Bloomberg News on Jun 4, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a phone call Wednesday warned him he would retaliate for a recent Ukrainian drone strike on Russian airfields, signaling further complications in the U.S. effort to broker a ceasefire.

“It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace,” Trump said of the conversation, which lasted over an hour, in a social media post. “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Trump said the pair also discussed ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and that the Russian president may take a role in the ongoing negotiations.

“President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion,” Trump said. “It is my opinion that Iran has been slow-walking their decision on this very important matter, and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time!”

Trump’s conversation with his Russian counterpart came the same day that Putin dismissed an offer from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the two to meet for direct top-level negotiations to further talks to end the war, now in its fourth year.

“How can such meetings be held under these conditions? What is there to talk about?,” Putin said during a televised meeting with government officials.

It also came hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticized a U.S. proposal for a nuclear deal and called American officials “arrogant” for expecting the Islamic Republic to cease uranium enrichment.

Iran and the US have been engaged in negotiations since April in a bid to end a tense, years-long standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program and have so far had five rounds of talks mediated by Oman.

Trump campaigned on ending the Ukraine war quickly, citing his relationship with Putin, but Ukraine and Russia remain far apart in peace talks, with Moscow making only maximalist demands. That gap has been exacerbated by a series of daring attacks by Ukraine against Russian targets that marked an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin, including an assault on airfields as far away as Siberia using drones hidden in trucks.

Zelenskyy has also proposed a ceasefire until leaders can hold a meeting in a place of Russia’s choosing, but Putin has continued to resist calls for a halt to the fighting.

In Washington, the president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, met with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and discussed the Istanbul talks and “the further course of negotiations,” Yermak said in an X post.