US President Donald Trump has dismissed Ukraine’s concerns about being left out of talks with Russia, and appeared to accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of starting the deadly conflict.
“You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal,” Trump said on Tuesday (US time), in response to concerns from Ukraine about being left out of the talks in Saudi Arabia.
“I like him personally. He’s fine. But I don’t care about personally. I care about getting the job done. You have leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – eight years after it illegally seized Crimea from Ukraine.
With European leaders again discussing sending peacekeepers to Ukraine to provide security guarantees if there is a peace deal, Trump said he wouldn’t be opposed.
“Having troops over there would be fine, I wouldn’t object to it at all,” he said at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Tuesday (US time).
Trump spoke for the first time since a US delegation established a working dialogue with Russia about Ukraine during talks in Riyadh earlier on Tuesday.
He said he was more confident after the talks and he would probably meet Russian President Vladimir Putin within a week.
“Russia wants to do something,” Trump said.
He also blasted former US president Joe Biden for his handling of Ukraine. Biden had worked to ensure Ukraine had the weapons to try to fight off the Russian invaders.
“I think I have the power to end this war,” Trump said.
Earlier, US and Russian officials met for the first time since World War II to discuss ways to halt the deadliest conflict in Europe, in a 4½-hour meeting in the Saudi capital.
Ukraine has said it will not accept any deal imposed without its consent.
In Riyadh, US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said the war must come to a permanent end, and this would involve negotiations over territory.
“Just a practical reality is that there is going to be some discussion of territory and there’s going to be discussion of security guarantees,” he said.
High-level teams would begin talks on ending the conflict and would separately work to restore the countries’ respective diplomatic missions in Washington and Moscow to ease future talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Rubio said he came away from the initial discussions convinced that Russia was “willing to begin to engage in a serious process” but that reaching peace would involve concessions from all sides.
Addressing Ukrainian and European concerns, Rubio said no one was being sidelined and any solution must be acceptable to all parties.
Zelensky said he had postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia planned for Wednesday until next month. That was reportedly to avoid giving “legitimacy” to the US-Russia talks.
“Decisions on how to end the war in Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Zelensky said on a visit to Turkey.
“We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us, I think for many others as well.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Riyadh that Moscow would not accept deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine, whatever flag they were operating under.
“Of course, this is unacceptable to us,” he said.
In the opening encounter on Tuesday, Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov – two veterans who have spent a combined 34 years in their roles – negotiated with three Trump administration officials in their first month on the job.
Lavrov said there was “high interest” in lifting economic barriers between the the US and Russia. Washington and other Western governments imposed waves of sanctions on Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine.
Rubio said European countries had also imposed sanctions, so they would have to be involved in talks on lifting the measures.
If the conflict ultimately ended, he said, it would “unlock” opportunities for US-Russian co-operation, including “some pretty unique, potentially historic economic partnerships”.
Tuesday’s talks also sparked concern in Washington, which has backed Ukraine’s defence with billions of dollars of military aid approved by the US Congress on a bipartisan basis.
“Russia has won round one,” US Representative Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat who is a co-chair of the bipartisan House Ukraine caucus, told Reuters.
“The Kremlin has been normalised in bilateral diplomacy that excludes Ukraine and NATO, and they gave up nothing to get that.”
-with AAP
