WASHINGTON (Reuters): U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he plans to hold talks about the war in Ukraine in coming days after his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August failed to achieve a breakthrough.
Trump has been frustrated at his inability to get a halt to the fighting, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after he initially predicted he would be able to end the war swiftly when he took office last January.
Trump said he would be holding talks in the next few days. A White House official said Trump is expected to speak on the phone on Thursday with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The French presidency said earlier on Wednesday that several European leaders, including Zelenskiy and France’s Emmanuel Macron, would call Trump on Thursday afternoon.
That call was expected to follow a mostly virtual meeting on Thursday, hosted by France, of some 30 countries to discuss their latest efforts to provide Ukraine with security support once there is a peace agreement with Russia. The European leaders were also expected to denounce Moscow’s unwillingness for negotiations.
Putin has shown little interest in ending the war after he and Trump voiced optimism about making progress during their meeting in Anchorage on Aug. 15.
“I have no message to President Putin,” Trump told reporters at the White House as he met Polish President Karol Nawrocki.
“He knows where I stand and he’ll make a decision one way or another. Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy about it and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen,” he said.
Trump did not explain what he meant, but he has talked about the possibility of imposing more sanctions on Russia.
Trump also said the war would be resolved “one way or the other” but that he had not realized it would be so difficult to end.
“I thought that that would be much easier,” Trump said. “I thought that would be in the middle of the pack, maybe one of the easiest. Sometimes you never know with war,” he said.
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