US President Donald Trump said on Saturday Ukraine should agree a deal to end the war with Russia because “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not”, after holding a summit with President Vladimir Putin that failed to yield a ceasefire.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Trump’s comments came after he met Putin for nearly three hours in Alaska on Friday at the first US, Russia summit since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The war — the deadliest in Europe for 80 years — has killed or wounded well over a million people from both sides, including thousands of mostly Ukrainian civilians, according to analysts.
Trump said he would hold talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday, adding: “If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved.”
Zelenskiy said after a lengthy conversation with Trump following the Alaska summit that Ukraine was ready for constructive cooperation, and he supported the idea of a trilateral meeting.
“Ukraine reaffirms its readiness to work with maximum effort to achieve peace,” he wrote on social media.
But Putin made no mention of meeting Zelenskiy when speaking to reporters earlier. Russian state news agency TASS quoted Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov as saying the possibility of a three-way summit including Zelenskiy had not been discussed.
