MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Trump: Russia willing to end Ukrainian war

Trump insisted the conflict could have been resolved earlier

US President Donald Trump Tuesday acknowledged from his Mar-a-Lago residence that Russia was willing to end the war in Ukraine and criticized Kyiv for its reluctance to negotiate. In the Republican leader's view, the conflict could have been resolved sooner.

“I am really disappointed by what has happened. I have been watching this [the Russian-Ukrainian conflict] for three years. I heard that [in Ukraine] they are upset that they don't have a seat [in the negotiations]. Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been easily resolved. A half-baked negotiator could have solved it years ago,” Trump noted as Russian and US teams met in Riyadh to discuss a solution to the crisis. At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talked with Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss possible prisoner exchanges.

“Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism,” Trump explained after Moscow's team headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his delegation. Trump also hinted he could be meeting with his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin sometime this month.

Both Moscow and Kyiv must make concessions to achieve peace, Rubio argued after talks with no Ukraine or European Union representatives, as French President Emmanuel Macron demanded from a separate gathering. Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized 2014 territory. Moscow controls the Crimean Peninsula that it unilaterally annexed in 2014, along with a large portion of eastern Ukraine pro-Russian separatists captured in subsequent fighting and lands the Russian military have taken over since the 2022 invasion.

“The goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that's fair, enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all parties involved,“ Rubio also told reporters. He added he was ”convinced“ that Moscow was willing to engage in a ”serious process” to end the war.

“We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other. I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions,” Lavrov reckoned.

Zelensky has long demanded that his country’s 2014 boundaries be restored, but US officials have said that is unrealistic, as was Kyiv’s long-sought goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In addition, the US and Russia agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

Rubio and Lavrov agreed on four broad principles to help negotiate peace and re-establish a bilateral relationship. They decided to create a consultation mechanism to address bilateral issues and appointed high-level teams to work on ending the war sustainably. Ukrainian officials were not present at the talks, leading to criticism from Zelensky, who claimed that any peace negotiations must involve Ukraine, European nations, Türkiye, and the U.K.

“Türkiye will be an ideal host for the possible talks between Russia, Ukraine, and America in the near future,” Erdogan said.