With US President Donald Trump poised to meet Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, and publicly weighing the risks of supplying Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, Russian officials described the call they initiated as “positive and productive,” and “held in an atmosphere of trust.”
In fact, it was a nearly two-and-a-half-hour intervention by President Vladimir Putin – a last-minute bid to halt in its tracks all that dangerous talk of potentially game-changing US weapons supplies to Ukraine.
