President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration has already had “very serious” negotiations with Russia over its war in Ukraine, and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin might soon take “significant” measures to end the long-running conflict.
“We will speak, and I believe we will do something significant,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to bring an end to that war. “If I had been president, that war would not have started.”
Trump would not specify who in his administration had been in communication with the Russians, but he asserted the two sides were “already talking.”
When asked if he had already spoken directly with Putin, Trump was coy: “I don’t want to say that.”
Trump has consistently stated that he would not have allowed the conflict to begin if he had been president, even as violence erupted in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces and rebels backed by Moscow, ahead of Putin’s deployment of tens of thousands of soldiers in 2022.
Since coming to office, Trump has lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, claiming that he should have reached a deal with Putin to avert the bloodshed.
In a Fox News interview earlier in January, the Trump mocked Zelenskyy for “talking so brave,” despite the fact that Ukraine relied heavily on US help to fight its war.
“They were brave, but we gave them billions of dollars,” Trump said.
In a recent interview with Russian state television, Putin complimented Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who prioritizes US interests.
“We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current U.S. president,” Putin had stated. “I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”
The Russian president’s comments also provided a direct support of Trump’s reluctance to accept loss in the 2020 election. Numerous federal and municipal agencies, a lengthy list of judges, senior former campaign staffers, and even his own attorney general have all stated that there is no evidence of the fraud he claims.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump promised to end the war quickly and chastised President Joe Biden’s administration for spending billions of dollars in US taxpayer money on military and economic aid to Ukraine to help it fight back against Russia.
Trump’s connection with Putin has been examined since his 2016 presidential campaign, when he urged Russia to locate and release missing emails erased by his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump publicly supported Putin despite US intelligence experts on whether Russia participated in the 2016 election to aid him, and he has lauded the Russian leader, even calling him “pretty smart” for conquering Ukraine.
