Donald Trump can’t seem to understand why Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky hate each other, as his efforts to negotiate a peace deal flail.
Both parties are refusing each other’s terms of agreement for a bipartisan meeting, which has been the cornerstone of Trump’s plan.
Trump had boasted on the campaign trail that he would secure peace on his first day back in office, but eight months later, there is no sign of a breakthrough.
Russia has spent much of the last decade pushing its military into Ukraine, first annexing Crimea and then, in 2022, starting the war that is now raging.
“The hatred between Zelensky and Putin is unfathomable,” the president told reporters before boarding Air Force One. “They hate each other so much, they can’t breathe.”
When asked if he still believes a trilateral meeting between himself, Putin, and Zelensky is on the cards, Trump said, “I don’t know, I think I’m going to have to do all the talking. They hate each other.”
Yet despite the setback, the president insisted that talks between the leaders would still take place “relatively soon.”
Trump bragged about his ability to end the war in Ukraine on “Day One” of his presidency on the campaign trail last year, and was quick to claim a peace deal was “done” following his summit with Putin in Alaska last month.
However, his hopes quickly unraveled when Putin stated that he would only agree to a meeting with Zelensky if it were held in Moscow, a condition Kyiv deemed unacceptable. He also undermined NATO’s plan to send an international peacekeeping force to the frontlines to enforce a ceasefire by insisting Russia would treat any foreign troops in Ukraine as “legitimate targets.”
In a rare moment of humility, Trump acknowledged the scale of the task ahead of him on Sunday. “I stopped seven wars. I thought this was going to be an easy one for me. But this turned out to be a tough one. The hatred between Zelensky and Putin is unfathomable,” he said.
Elsewhere during the interview, Trump referred to Russia as the “aggressor” in the war, a change in rhetoric after previously refusing to condemn Moscow for invading Ukraine.
Referring to a large number of troop casualties over the weekend, Trump said, “I want to stop the killing. It just came out that 8,000 soldiers have died this week, from both countries. Some more from Russia, but when you’re the aggressor, you lose more.
“They are Russians, they are not American soldiers — but they’re still human beings. They’re souls. And I want to stop it.”
On Friday, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Politico that the United States wants to “displace all Russian gas” by placing further sanctions on Moscow, thereby forcing them to the negotiation table. “The more we can strangle Russia’s ability to fund this murderous war, the better for all of us,” he said.
