Zelenskyy and Putin trade barbs as an end to the war in Ukraine gets no closer
Even so, “what looks like a growing consensus in the West that some form of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine is coming closer doesn’t always take account of whether Russia and Ukraine themselves might see negotiations as viable or even useful,” Keir Giles, a leading defense analyst at London’s Chatham House think tank, told NBC News.
While European leaders have accelerated planning for a worst-case scenario in which the Kremlin pushes troops further onto the continent and Washington does not come to their aid, Trump has made increasingly strong threats against his Russian counterpart.
The President’s claim that he would end the Ukraine war in one day after taking office did not come to pass, although members of his national security team have in recent weeks acknowledged the difficulties of brokering a possible peace accord.
“Let’s set it at 100 days and move all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that the solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage,” retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s pick to serve as special envoy to Ukraine, told Fox News last month.
Still, the conflict has shown no signs of de-escalating despite Trump’s departure from the warmer sentiments he conveyed during his first term.
“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon,” Trump said last week in a social media post, “I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”
That shift in tone towards Russia is a “wildcard” in efforts by the Trump administration to end the war, Chatham House’s Giles said, and “a striking and remarkable shift from his first term in office.”
“Observers of Trump have noticed that what he says does not always translate directly into what he directs his administration to do,” he told NBC News, adding that even a superficial change in tone is “a cause for Ukraine and its friends to have limited optimism.”
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian state press Monday that no one from the Trump administration had so far reached out to the Kremlin to set up a meeting with Putin.
For his part, Zelenskyy called Trump’s threats of sanctions “just and fair” in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Russian troops continue to make territorial gain in Ukraine after capturing the village of Dvorichna in northeastern Kharkiv, the army said Tuesday.