Trump agrees Ukraine is stalling peace, says Kremlin
Moscow agrees with US President Donald Trump's view that Ukraine is holding up a peace deal to end the almost four years of fighting since Russia invaded its neighbour, a Kremlin official said Thursday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Yes, we can agree with it, it's indeed so.” His comments came after Trump said in published remarks Wednesday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is an obstacle in US-led peace talks.
That assessment is at odds with the sentiment of European officials, who have repeatedly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of stalling in negotiations while his bigger army tries to push deeper into Ukraine and Russia relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Kyiv and Moscow still appear publicly far apart on their terms for a peace deal. “I think he's ready to make a deal,” Trump was quoted as saying of the Russian president in an interview with Reuters. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” he said, naming Zelenskyy as obstructing a settlement.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who along with many European and NATO member nations has strongly backed Ukraine, pushed back on Trump's reported comments. “It is Russia who rejected the peace plan prepared by the US,” not Zelenskyy, Tusk posted on X on Thursday. “The only Russian response (was) further missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. This is why the only solution is to strengthen pressure on Russia. And you all know it.”
Putin said Thursday that Moscow, like Ukraine, demands security guarantees as part of a prospective peace deal. “We must proceed from the premise that security must be truly universal, and therefore equal and indivisible, and it cannot be ensured for some at the expense of the security of others,” Putin said after receiving credentials from foreign ambassadors in the Kremlin. “In the absence of it, Russia will continue to consistently pursue the goals it has set,” Putin added.
Trump's position appeared to deviate from recent comments by US officials that the American president is running out of patience with Putin. US Senator Lindsey Graham, said last week that Trump is on board with a tough sanctions package intended to economically cripple Russia. “This will be well-timed, as Ukraine is making concessions for peace and Putin is all talk, continuing to kill the innocent,” Graham said in a statement.
Also, the United States accused Russia on Monday of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” of its war at a time when the Trump administration is trying to advance negotiations toward peace. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Wednesday that “the Kremlin has been delaying the peace process for months in order to protract the war and achieve Russia's original war aims through military means.”
A Russian drone struck a playground in the western city of Lviv overnight, according to the head of the regional military administration Maksym Kozytskyi. The blast shattered over a hundred windows in the area, though nobody was injured, he said. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that no date has been agreed for US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff to make another visit to Moscow for further peace talks.
