Trump asserts US progress in negotiating end to Russia-Ukraine war
Photo: AP / Jason Allen
President Donald Trump has expressed confidence that the United States has made progress in negotiations aimed at ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. However, he declined to disclose specific details about his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Reuters reports this.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, President Trump mentioned that he has been in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump did not specify whether he had a conversation with Putin before or after the inauguration but said:
"I had it. Let's just say I had it… And I expect many more conversations. We have to end this war…
I don't want to tell you about these conversations. I believe that we are making progress. We want to stop the Ukrainian-Russian war."
The president said that the United States maintains contact with Russia and Ukraine.
Trump said he would meet with Putin "at the appropriate time."
In an interview with the New York Post on Friday, Trump said that he "better not say" how many times he had spoken to Putin and did not say when the last conversation took place.
In particular, the US President remarked that Putin "is not indifferent" to the killings occurring on the battlefield.
"He wants people to stop dying," he believes.
Putin last spoke officially with former US President Joe Biden in February 2022, shortly before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, Trump said that he would probably meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week to discuss ending the war.
As reported, US President Donald Trump said that he was going to end the Russian-Ukrainian war but that Europe should provide security guarantees for Ukraine.
For reference:
As noted by experts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is demonstrating his disinterest in a negotiated ceasefire and continues to seek to destroy Ukrainian statehood.
At the same time, it is not the first time that Putin and his representatives have made statements portraying Russia as ready for negotiations to resolve the war in Ukraine, which are not taking place because Kyiv allegedly does not want them.
In reality, Putin is demanding that Kyiv refuse to join NATO and internationally recognize the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson regions, and Crimea as Russian territories.
On January 29, Putin said that he was ready to "allocate people" for negotiations with Ukraine to end the war but called the talks themselves "illegitimate." In response, Zelensky said that with such statements, Putin only confirmed that he was afraid of negotiations and was trying to drag out the war. According to Ukraine's head of state, Russia is doing everything possible to either continue a full-scale invasion instead of real peace or to get a pause for preparing a new aggression.
In addition, on February 5, the Russian leader's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, publicly acknowledged for the first time the Kremlin's contacts with the new administration of US President Donald Trump.
Moreover, the head of the White House announced that his administration had scheduled meetings and preliminary discussions with the Ukrainian, Russian, and other parties regarding the end of the war.
