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Donald Trump has said he held talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over a negotiated end of the three year Russia-Ukraine war, indicated that Russian negotiators want to meet with US counterparts.
Trump told the New York Post that he had spoken to Putin, remarking that “I better not say” just how many times.
In comments to the outlet on Friday aboard Air Force One, Trump said he believed Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield but did not say if the Russian leader had presented any concrete commitments to end the nearly three-year conflict.
Trump revealed that he has a plan to end the war but declined to go into details. “I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”
Last month, Trump estimated that approximately 1 million Russian soldiers and 700,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed since the invasion began – an estimate far in excess of numbers that Ukrainian officials or independent analysts have presented.
The Post said the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, joined the president during for the interview.
“Let’s get these meetings going,” Trump said. “They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield”.
Waltz would not confirm that Trump had spoken with Putin, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that “there are certainly a lot of sensitive conversations going on” and that senior US diplomats would be in Europe this week “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table”.Ending the war, Waltz added, had come up in conversations with India’s prime minister Narendra Modi, China’s president Xi Jinping and leaders across the Middle East. “Everybody is ready to help President Trump end in this war,” Waltz said, and repeated Trump’s comments that he is prepared to tax, tariff and sanction Russia.
“The president is prepared to put all of those issues on the table this week, including the future of US aid to Ukraine. We need to recoup those costs, and that is going to be a partnership with the Ukrainians in terms of their rare earth (materials), their natural resources, their oil and gas, and also buying ours.”
But Waltz reiterated what he said was the Trump administration’s “underlying principle” that the Europeans “have to own this conflict going forward. President Trump is going to end it, and then in terms of security guarantees that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.”
During his presidential campaign, Trump made repeated vows to end the war quickly if he was re-elected, often pointing to the loss of life on the battlefield.
Last month, Trump said “Most people thought this war would last about a week, and now it’s been going on for three years,” and said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had expressed interest in a negotiated peace deal.
During the interview on Friday, Trump again expressed sorrow for the loss of life in the war and compared the young men dying to his own sons.
“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason,” Trump told the Post, adding that Putin also “wants to see people stop dying”.
The Kremlin on Sunday declined to confirm or deny the report of the phone call. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS state news agency he was unaware of any such call.
“What can be said about this news: as the administration in Washington unfolds its work, many different communications arise. These communications are conducted through different channels. And of course, amid the multiplicity of these communications, I personally may not know something, be unaware of something. Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”
The Kremlin has previously said it is awaiting “signals” on a possible meeting between Trump and Putin. The head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Leonid Slutsky, has said that work on preparing contacts between Moscow and Washington “is at an advanced stage”.
The US president also ventured into the current stand-off between Israel and Iran, saying he “would like a deal done with Iran on non-nuclear” and would prefer a negotiated deal to “bombing the hell out of it… They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.”
If there was a deal with Iran, he said, “Israel wouldn’t bomb them”. But he declined to go further on any approach to Iran: “In a way, I don’t like telling you what I’m going to tell them. You know, it’s not nice.”
“I could tell what I have to tell them, and I hope they decide that they’re not going to do what they’re currently thinking of doing. And I think they’ll really be happy,” Trump added.
