Key points
- Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine: Trump
- Expresses displeasure with Zelensky for ruling out territorial concessions
- US president has failed to broker peace in Ukraine so far despite sweeping claims
ISLAMABAD: US President Donald Trump has said he would try to return territory to Ukraine as he prepares to meet Vladimir Putin and lay the groundwork for a deal to bring an end to the war.
“Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” the US president said at a White House news conference ahead of Friday’s summit in Alaska.
He and the Russian president are due to hold talks in Alaska at the end of the week. Trump claimed that he could know within two minutes of meeting Putin whether progress was possible, according to BBC.
Displeasure
He expressed displeasure with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for ruling out territorial concessions.
The US president has spent the first months of his second term in office trying to broker peace in Ukraine – after boasting he could end the conflict in 24 hours – but multiple rounds of talks, phone calls and diplomatic visits have failed to yield a breakthrough.
“I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin and I’m going to be telling him ‘you’ve got to end this war,'” Trump told a White House press conference, saying that he would “like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly.”
“Constructive conversations”
“I think we’ll have constructive conversations,” said the president, noting that he would seek out Putin’s “parameters” for peace, then call Zelensky and other European leaders right after the meeting.
Trump said last week that “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia — a suggestion Zelensky rejected.
