U.S. President Donald Trump said that at the first meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “great disrespect” had been shown toward Russia. He described the hostility between the two as one of the main obstacles to ending the war.
“There’s enormous hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky,” Trump said in an interview with CBS. He added: “At their first meeting, there was great disrespect shown toward Russia.” He made the statement in response to a question about whether Zelensky’s dislike of Putin was understandable, given that Russia had launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Trump also said he believed the war would end soon and repeated his claim that the conflict would not have started if he had been president at the time. According to him, Ukraine will ultimately be “a little bit different in form,” without specifying what he meant.
The First Meeting Took Place in Paris in 2019
Putin and Zelensky met for the first time on December 9, 2019, in Paris, as part of a meeting in the “Normandy” format. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also took part in the talks.
The meeting at the time was aimed at ending the conflict in Donbas and implementing the Minsk agreements. The participants agreed on measures to uphold the ceasefire, exchange detainees, clear mines and open new checkpoints. The continuation of talks on political issues was also envisaged, including the special status of certain areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
According to Reuters, cited by Euronews, Putin and Zelensky had almost no eye contact during the joint meeting and did not shake hands in front of the cameras. The meeting in Paris remains the first and only direct meeting between the two leaders.
Trump’s comment comes amid Washington’s ongoing efforts to mediate an end to the war. In the interview, he did not specify a concrete timeframe or a new agreement between Moscow and Kyiv, but said he believed the conflict would end soon.
Sources: cbsnews.com, euronews.com