U.S. President Donald Trump may say he believes Russia and Ukraine can reach a peace deal, but he’s got a long way to go to sell such a possibility to Ukrainians.
“It truly looks as if they want to surrender Ukraine, because I don’t see any benefits for our country from these negotiations or Trump’s rhetoric,” said Myroslava Lesko, a 23-year-old manager in Kyiv, told Reuters.
Trump revealed this week that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed the prospect of ending the all-out war in Ukraine. He then talked to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the same topic.
The U.S. president also said he’d directed his officials to begin talks on ending the war. Amid ambiguity on whether such talks would involve Ukraine, Trump said Thursday: “They’re part of it.”
Trump’s decision to start talking with Putin, and to go around Ukraine in doing so, upended standing U.S. policy and has been criticized by European leaders — including those in Ukraine.
After U.S. President Donald Trump hedged when asked if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be an equal partner in peace talks with Russia, defence ministers from NATO countries, including Canada’s Bill Blair, said there should be no discussion about Ukrainian territory without Ukraine.
Zelenskyy had tried to get to the front of the line with Trump ahead of Putin. But that didn’t happen, and now Ukraine must make its case after the fact.
Oleksandr Merezhko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and the chair of the Verkhovna Rada’s foreign affairs committee, said it would have been “much better” had the U.S. president had his conversations in the reverse order.
“It would make more sense because it is Ukraine which is the victim of Russian aggression,” Merezhko told CBC News from Kyiv.
No details, also no comfort
Merezhko said Trump appears to have political reasons for wanting to see the conflict end, but it also seemed the U.S. leader still had a lot to learn about the war and its causes.
“He has this desire to bring peace to Ukraine, but he doesn’t seem to … [have] any concrete details, which is what matters,” said Merezhko, noting Trump previously claimed that he could end the war within 24 hours.
On the streets of Kyiv, residents who spoke to Reuters did not express much comfort in the fact details are lacking on what Trump may want to see happen with the future of their country.
Engineer Hryhoryi Buhoyets, 60, said Trump was a different political animal than his predecessor, Joe Biden.
“But on the other hand, he can put pressure on people,” Buhoyets said Thursday. “Some say he may have backup plans but these plans will not benefit Ukraine. The kind of Ukraine we would like to have.”
Biden was in office when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. His administration was a strong backer of Ukraine’s fight against the invaders.
Under Trump, officials have provided a blurred view on the conflict, claiming to consider hitting Russia with sanctions and tariffs, while also saying it’s unrealistic for Ukraine to recover land occupied by Russian forces.
The Trump-led White House has also moved to try to quickly arrange terms for a deal that would see Ukraine share its rare-earth resources with the U.S., in exchange for continued support and security guarantees.
Reflecting on that particular proposal, Angelica Tkachuk, a 29-year-old office worker, said it appeared to her that “what his plans are is to rob Ukraine of as much as possible. Not to make peace here.”
The view outside Ukraine
Observers outside Ukraine have also voiced their own concerns about what Trump is proposing — and that includes negotiating with Putin and believing that he will follow through on the terms of any forthcoming arrangement.
“I don’t trust Putin an inch, and without any form of mechanism [to prevent further aggression] … he’ll be back,” said Ben Wallace, the former U.K. secretary of state for defence, when speaking to Times Radio. “He will re-arm and he will be back.”
Regarding negotiating with Putin, Trump was asked at the White House Thursday if he trusted his Russian counterpart.
“I believe that he would like to see something happen. I trust him on this subject,” Trump said.
In nearly three years of all-out war, Russian forces have pummelled Ukrainian cities and towns, as well as key infrastructure, with a range of artillery, drones, glide bombs and missiles. The war has killed more than 12,000 civilians in Ukraine, through the end of 2024, according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
Yet Ukraine has also taken the conflict to Russia — including by seizing a swath of the Kursk oblast last August. Ukraine’s top army commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that Ukraine still holds 500 square kilometres of Kursk.
But the Kremlin appears cool to the possibility of trading any Russian-occupied land for parts of Kursk under Ukrainian control.
“This is impossible,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday. “Russia has never discussed and will not discuss the exchange of its territory.”
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