President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts “hate each other” and he’s stuck in the middle.
Trump's efforts to broker peace between the warring eastern European neighbors have fizzled out since his August summit in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his meeting the next day with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several other European leaders.
Rebuffing U.S. diplomacy, Putin has intensified his attacks on Ukraine since then while sticking to his maximalist demands to end the war.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, is running out of patience, and he called on Trump on Monday to take a “clear position” on Russia.
Trump has stopped short of imposing his promised punishment on the Kremlin, and Ukraine’s allies have so far not outlined a defined set of security guarantees they could offer Kyiv to help end the war.
But in an apparent show of frustration about his role as mediator in the 3½-year war, Trump said Tuesday that it looked as though he would “have to sit in the room with them, because they can’t sit in a room together.”
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, he demanded that Europe “stop buying oil from Russia” and said Zelenskyy is going to “have to make a deal.”
He made the comments after Zelenskyy told NBC News' British partner, Sky News, that Trump had “enough force to make Putin afraid of him.”
Europe has “already introduced 18 sanctions packages” against Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “All that’s lacking now is a strong sanctions package from the U.S. More needs to be done, quicker.”
On security guarantees, Zelenskyy said he really wanted to have all the agreements in place and a “document that is supported by the U.S. and all European partners.”
“To make this happen, we need a clear position of President Trump,” he added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump and Zelenskyy will “probably” meet next week in New York during the United Nations General Assembly.
Trump is trying “everything possible” to end the war, Rubio said during a trip to the Middle East.
Trump has frequently chided the two leaders for refusing to bargain, and Russia has thrown cold water on his attempts to organize a summit between Putin and Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy said Putin was “trying to find a way out of isolation” through diplomacy with Trump, adding the meeting in Alaska “gave a lot to Putin.”
“I believe, if it was a trilateral meeting, we would have some result,” he said.
Days after his meeting with Putin, Trump promised during a meeting with European leaders in Washington that the United States would provide security guarantees as part of any settlement with Russia, a red-line issue for Kyiv.
Russia said such talks were a “road to nowhere” without its involvement.
Trump will travel to the United Kingdom for a state visit Tuesday, with talks on the war in Ukraine expected to top the agenda in his meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Russian airstrikes on Ukraine have continued, with eight people killed and dozens more injured across multiple regions in the previous 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.
Ukraine has been waging its own aerial campaign, using drones to strike deep inside Russia, with a focus on oil infrastructure.
