Trump says he will talk with Putin Tuesday on ending Ukraine war

“We want to see if we can bring that war to an end," Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday, according to a video published by the Associated Press. “Maybe we can, maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance."

Trump said “a lot of work" had been done over the weekend ahead of Tuesday’s conversation, which would include discussions on terms for ending a conflict that recently entered its fourth year.

U.S. and Russian officials have been in talks on Ukraine over recent weeks, an effort that gathered pace after Washington reached an agreement with Kyiv last week on a 30-day cease-fire proposal. Putin has so far rejected that proposal and renewed calls for discussions on a permanent end to the war.

“We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants," Trump told reporters when asked about concessions that the U.S. would seek from Russia in a peace deal.

“I think we have a lot of it already discussed very much by both sides, Ukraine and Russia," Trump said. “We are already talking about that—dividing up certain assets."

Russia has secured steady gains on the battlefield and largely dislodged Ukraine’s toehold in the region of Kursk, the slice of Russian territory it took last August that Ukrainian officials had hoped would give them extra leverage in any talks.

Moscow in the past has ruled out a temporary cease-fire and insisted that a lasting agreement to halt the fighting would take time to negotiate. It has insisted that it holds on to at least the 18% of Ukrainian territory it already controls, an area roughly equivalent in size to Virginia. It also expressed its intention to reverse policies that have sidelined Russian cultural influence in Ukraine and preclude the country’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com