US President Donald Trump called on Kiev and Moscow to "stop where they are right now" and for both sides to end their protracted war. He made the statement after a long meeting at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Associated Press reported, BTA reported.
The agency notes that in the nine months since he returned to office, Trump has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with the conflict, but now, with his latest comments, he seems to have returned to the course of forcing Ukraine to give up the territories that Russia has taken from it.
„Enough bloodshed. Stop where they are right now. Let both sides declare victory, let history judge (who it is for later)!“, Trump said on his profile on the social network “Truth Social“ shortly after receiving Zelensky and his team.
Later in the evening, after arriving in Florida, where he will spend the weekend, Trump called on both sides to “immediately end the war“ and hinted that Moscow would keep the seized Ukrainian territories.
“It follows the front line, wherever it is, otherwise it will become too complicated. It stops at the line of combat contact and both sides return to their families, stop the killing“, he told reporters.
Trump's comments are another reversal in his positions on the war. In recent weeks, he has become increasingly impatient with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and has shown a greater willingness to help Ukraine win the war.
After his meeting with Zelensky in New York last month, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Trump even said that he believed that Ukraine should regain all the territory it lost after the Russian invasion began in February 2022. This was a drastic change for the American president, who had previously argued that Kiev should cede territory to end the war.
Trump's current change in tone came after his long phone call with Putin earlier this week, after which he announced that he would meet with the Russian leader in Budapest in the coming weeks.
Yesterday, in the presence of Zelensky, the owner of the White House gave signals that he was rather against the sale of long-range cruise missiles “Tomahawk“ – a weapon that Ukrainians believe will fundamentally change the course of the war and force Putin to negotiate.
“I also have an obligation to make sure that as a country we have enough weapons, because you never know what can happen in war and peace. We would rather not need the “Tomahawk“. Frankly, we would rather the war was over. Frankly, we would rather this war was over“, Trump said.
This new rhetoric from the US president about “Tomahawk“ is certainly disappointing for Ukraine. In recent days, Trump has shown a willingness to sell Kiev some of these missiles, despite Putin warning that such a move would further strain Russian-American relations, the AP notes.
But after Thursday's phone call with Putin, Trump increasingly began to question the likelihood of Ukraine receiving such a weapon, which has a range of 1,600 km.
Yesterday's meeting was the fifth in-person meeting between Trump and Zelensky since the Republican returned to office in January.
The president said it was still "to be decided" whether Zelensky would participate in the upcoming talks in Hungary, suggesting that a "double meeting" with the leaders of the warring parties is probably the most workable option for productive negotiations, that is, for him to meet with them separately.
“These two leaders do not like each other and we want to make the meeting convenient for everyone“, Trump added.
During his 2024 election campaign, Trump insisted that he would quickly end the war, but the momentum after his August meetings in Alaska with Putin and with Zelensky and European allies at the White House appears to have run out, the AP notes. After these talks, Trump emerged confident that he was on the way to arranging direct negotiations between Zelensky and Putin, but the Russian leader showed no interest in meeting with Zelensky, and Moscow stepped up its attacks on Ukraine.
When asked by a journalist yesterday whether he was worried that Putin was misleading him, Trump admitted that this was also possible, but added that he was confident that he could handle the Russian leader.
“I've been played by the best of them my whole life, but in the end it worked out really well. I think I'm pretty good at these things,“ concluded the American president.