President Donald Trump stated on Tuesday at the NATO summit in Ankara that he expects a settlement to the war in Ukraine “hopefully soon,” following what he described as lengthy telephone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Speaking alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Mr Trump said both leaders “want to make a deal” and that he believed “we’re going to get it settled.” The remarks, delivered on the summit’s opening day, mark the most explicit US indication of an imminent diplomatic opening since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

Viewed from Washington, the president’s optimism was paired with a deliberate distancing from the conflict’s direct impact. Mr Trump told reporters that the war “doesn’t affect the United States” and that an ocean separates the two countries, while describing battlefield imagery he had seen as “a carnage” that must end. The Kremlin issued no immediate readout of the conversation, but according to Mr Trump’s account, President Putin signalled a readiness to negotiate. Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, also in Ankara for the summit, did not confirm the substance of the call but stated he would use his expected meeting with Mr Trump on Wednesday to press Ukraine’s “desperate need” for air defence systems against Russian ballistic missile strikes.

The diplomatic activity unfolds against a backdrop of sharply intensified long-range attacks. Ukrainian forces have over recent months stepped up strikes on Russia’s energy sector, while Moscow has launched large-scale aerial assaults that killed 50 people in Kyiv in July alone, according to Ukrainian authorities. On the eve of the summit, Russia’s defence ministry reported intercepting more than 430 Ukrainian drones aimed at Moscow, and a separate Russian strike on Ukraine killed 28 people. US government estimates place total military and civilian casualties in the war at 1.2 million, though neither Moscow nor Kyiv publishes official military loss figures.

Russia currently holds approximately one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, having unilaterally annexed the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in 2022. Mr Trump’s push for a rapid settlement comes as his administration signals a willingness to broker direct talks, a posture that analysts in European capitals view with caution given the absence of a public Russian commitment to withdraw from occupied areas. The dossier remains open: the Trump-Zelenskiy bilateral meeting on Wednesday is expected to clarify whether the US president’s optimism translates into a concrete mediation framework or remains, for now, a rhetorical shift on the sidelines of the alliance’s summit.