WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to speak this week as the U.S. tries to broker a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff.
It would be the second publicized call between the two leaders since Trump began his second term in January. Trump and Putin spoke in February and agreed to start high-level talks over ending the war in Ukraine.
“I think the two presidents are going to have a really good and positive discussion this week,” Witkoff said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Witkoff this week met with Putin in Russia for talks aimed at ending the country’s invasion of Ukraine and said he expects to see a deal soon.
“The president uses the timeframe weeks and I don’t disagree with him. I am really hopeful that we are going to see some real progress here,” Witkoff said.
When Witkoff appeared later Sunday on CBS' “Face the Nation,” he again spoke about a prospective Putin-Trump call but did not offer specifics on what decisions might be made coming out of the discussion.
Witkoff said they forged a relationship in Trump’s first term and that he expects the call this week to be “very positive and constructive.”
Trump's first call to Putin came after Witkoff traveled to Russia to bring home Marc Fogel, an American history teacher the U.S. had deemed wrongfully detained.
One day after the prisoner swap, Trump announced that he spoke to Putin and said their call was “lengthy and highly productive.”
Witkoff demurred on whether Putin and Trump will decide in the call to move forward with a U.S.-proposed 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine has agreed to the deal. Putin has said he agrees in principle with the proposal but there are details to be worked out.
“President Trump is the ultimate decision maker, our decision maker, and President Putin, for the country of Russia, is their decision maker," Witkoff said. "I think it’s a very positive sign that the two of them will be talking at some point. I think that’s showing that there’s positive momentum.”
Witkoff also brushed aside a recent assessment from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said in a statement that Russia “does not seem to be sincerely seeking peace” and that Putin was intensifying the fighting before negotiating.
Witkoff said he was not aware of Macron's comments but said, “it’s unfortunate when people make those sort of assessments” when “they don’t have necessarily firsthand knowledge.”
“I know what I heard, the body language I witnessed," Witkoff said of his meeting with Putin. "I saw a constructive effort, over a long period of time to to discuss the specifics of what’s going on in the field.”
FILE - U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff attends and interview after participating in a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. national aecurity adviser Mike Waltz, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 18, 2025. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool Photo via AP)
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Calling the groups in charge of professional tennis “a cartel,” the players' association co-founded by Novak Djokovic filed an antitrust lawsuit against the women's and men's tours, the International Tennis Federation and the sport's integrity agency on Tuesday in federal court in New York.
The suit by the Professional Tennis Players' Association says the organizations that run the sport hold “complete control over the players’ pay and working conditions” and their setup constitutes “textbook violations of state and federal law” that “immunize professional tennis from ordinary market forces and deny professional tennis players and other industry participants their right to fair competition.”
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and wants players to gain access to more earnings, arguing that the governing bodies that oversee the four Grand Slam tournaments — Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open — and other professional events “cap the prize money tournaments award and limit players’ ability to earn money off the court.”
The WTA Tour and ATP Tour issued separate statements Tuesday saying they would “vigorously” defend themselves.
The WTA said it has “committed to a $400 million increase in player compensation” in recent years and labeled the PTPA action a “baseless legal case” that is “regrettable and misguided.” The ATP touted a “major increase in player compensation” that created a jump of “$70 million in the past five years,” and called the PTPA's case “entirely without merit.”
“The PTPA has consistently chosen division and distraction through misinformation over progress,” the ATP's statement said. “Five years on from its inception in 2020, the PTPA has struggled to establish a meaningful role in tennis, making its decision to pursue legal action at this juncture unsurprising.”
The ITF and the International Tennis Integrity Agency — which investigates and adjudicates doping and corruption cases — declined to comment.
The PTPA was founded by 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil in August 2020, aiming to offer representation for players who are independent contractors in a largely individual sport. One of the goals made clear along the way was to become a sort of full-fledged union that negotiates collective bargaining agreements like those that exist in team sports.
“For the past few years, the PTPA, an organization I’ve worked on tirelessly since its inception, has made countless efforts to collaborate with the tours in hopes of achieving positive change for players. Despite these efforts and attempts to engage in constructive dialogue, we were met with resistance and a lack of meaningful action. It is because of this ongoing disregard for players that we were left with no alternative but to take action of our own,” Pospisil posted on social media. “For too long, players have been forced to accept a broken system that ignores our well-being, undervalues our contributions, and leaves us without real representation.”
Djokovic is not one of the players listed as a plaintiff.
“His support for this is already explicit. It’s redundant since PTPA (is) named as plaintiff, and he is on (the executive committee),” PTPA spokesman David Cooper wrote in an email. “He wanted to allow others to step up since this is not just Novak’s (organization).”
The PTPA said it met with more than 250 players — women and men, and a majority of the top 20 in the WTA and ATP rankings — before going to court.
“Tennis is broken,” PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar said in a news release. “Behind the glamorous veneer that the defendants promote, players are trapped in an unfair system that exploits their talent, suppresses their earnings, and jeopardizes their health and safety. We have exhausted all options for reform through dialogue, and the governing bodies have left us no choice but to seek accountability through the courts. Fixing these systemic failures isn’t about disrupting tennis — it’s about saving it for the generations of players and fans to come.”
FILE - Canada's Vasek Pospisil and Serbia's Novak Djokovic talk tactics during their double match against during their Round of 32 match at the Adelaide International Tennis tournament in Adelaide, Australia, Jan. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Kelly Barnes, File)
