MOSCOW (Reuters): Russia cannot comment on Donald Trump’s idea for ending the war in Ukraine because Moscow does not know what it involves, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
Trump said last week during a debate against President Joe Biden that if he won the November US election, he would have the war settled before he took office in January.
“This is not Trump’s first statement on this, and he has made statements along these lines before. Without knowing the essence of what this is about, we cannot comment on it,” Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin has said that any peace plan for Ukraine proposed by a possible future Trump administration would have to reflect the reality on the ground, where its forces control nearly a fifth of Ukraine, but that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks. Ukraine says Russia’s terms for ending the war amount to a demand for its surrender.
Trump has not said how he would go about ending the war, now well into its third year. In last week’s debate, he said Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in February 2022 if there had been a “real president” in the US who was respected by Putin.
Biden said Trump had “no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”
