Donald Trump promised that he would end up on the first day of his mandate, forcing to sit down to negotiate Presidents Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, and Russia, Vladimir Putin. He has discovered that. Three weeks after returning to the White House, the conflict is still underway and is about to turn three years old, but he assures that his intention remains to end the clashes and says he has spoken with Putin about it.
In a brief interview granted to the newspaper The New York Postthe US president argues that Putin “wants to see that people stop dying”: “All those dead people. Young people, beautiful people. Like our children, two million of them. And because yes. ”
Trump also assures that he has a plan to finish that war, although in the interview he does not give deadlines or details. “I hope it is fast .. This war is so terrible in Ukraine. I want to end this damn story. ” And he adds that he wants to launch the meetings he promised during his electoral campaign: “They want to gather,” he insists.
He reveals having spoken with Putin, with whom he declares to maintain a good relationship. But it does not specify if he has already done so as president, after his investiture on January 20, or refers to previous conversations. The journalist Bob Woodward, published on the eve of the US elections, that the Republican remained in contact with the Russian president and spoke with him after his first mandate, something that his campaign denied.
The Kremlin avoided corroborating Trump’s claims in the post interview with an answer that, however, sounded to a yes. “I can’t confirm or deny it,” said Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, this Sunday. The high position made it clear that contacts between the two countries exist, but avoided specifying whether they also take place at the presidential level.
“As the Washington administration sits, there are many different communications, and these communications are carried out through different channels. Due to its multiplicity, it may be that I personally are not aware of something, ”added Peskov enigmatic to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Speaking on Friday during a meeting at the White House with Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ihiba, Trump indicated that he planned to talk to Zelenski this incoming week, and also wants to do it with Putin. His vice president, JD Vance, will meet with the Ukrainian leader during the Munich Security Conference, which opens next Friday.
From his return to the White House, Trump has recognized that sitting at the table to the two presidents will require more time than he had declared during the election campaign, and now speaks of a term around six months.
As things are, his troops are offensive, the Trump administration could stop sending help to Ukraine, the forces of the invaded country are increasingly exhausted and the Russian president trusts that Europe also ends up tired and divided Before the conflict. Despite an unprecedented load of sanctions, the Russian economy is not as weakened as Western powers had calculated at the beginning of the war.
In his speech at the Davos Economic Forum, Trump raised a proposal before world leaders so that oil -producing countries increase their extraction volume and make crude oil prices, the great source of Russian income. This, in his opinion, would weaken enough the economy of the invading country to persuade the Kremlin of the need to negotiate.
The intention of Kremlin is to decide the future of Ukraine in bilateral negotiations with Washington ,. Putin protects that Zelenski’s mandate has extended automatically due to the impossibility of celebrating normal elections for war, and considers it, therefore, irregular.
“Zelenski has big problems of iure As for its legitimacy, ”said Pisskov four days ago, although his argument fell for his own weight: the Ukraine Constitution prohibits holding elections under martial law, and Ukraine now resists now in a front of more than 1,100 kilometers.
