‘Russia ready to end barbarianism’ says Donald Trump amid talks on Ukraine war
Donald Trump on Wednesday stated that Russia wanted to put an end to the “barbarianism” going on in its war with Ukraine as the US and Russia held negotiations on ending the conflict.
While addressing reporters at the White House, Trump said, “Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the barbarianism that’s going on over there. Soldiers are being killed by thousands on a weekly basis. Apart from Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, a lot of Koreans have been killed. We want to end it.”
He also claimed that a war would never have broken out under his watch, saying, “It’s a senseless war. It should have never happened; it would have never happened if I were President.”
US-Russia talks on war with Ukraine
Negotiations to end the three-year-long war began in Riyadh on Tuesday at the Diriyah Palace. US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible.”
However, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy slammed the US and Russia for excluding his country from the talks. Zelenskyy said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Ukraine was not an active participant in the negotiations.
Trump said Ukraine should have never started the war and could have made a deal with him earlier if they had wanted.
“Today I heard, oh, well, we weren’t invited. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” he said.
The talks in Riyadh mark the first official high-level talks between the US and Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Rubio also noted that a few European nations would be invited to participate at some point since they have sanctions in place against Russia as well.
Yuri Ushakov, Russian foreign policy aide, confirmed the appointment of negotiating teams but stated that it was “difficult” to discuss a date for a potential Trump-Putin meeting. Trump had previously stated that he would meet the Russian president before the end of the month.
