The Kremlin has rejected Donald Trump’s latest effort to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump on Sunday floated the idea of ending the bloody Ukraine conflict by freezing the front-lines of the war as the new country’s new borders.
‘We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are — the battle lines,’ Trump told reporters when asked about reports he pressed Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms for a ceasefire.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded to Trump’s offer by throwing cold water on the prospect of allowing Ukraine to keep some parts of the Donbas region.
‘This topic was repeatedly raised in various forms during contacts between Russia and the US. The Russian side answered every time, this answer is well known: the consistency of Russia’s position doesn’t change.’
The White House declined to comment.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump insisted he never tried to force Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia‘s demands to end the war.
The Ukrainian president’s meeting with Trump on Friday didn’t go smoothly. Trump apparently launched a profanity-riddled diatribe against Zelensky during the closed-door meeting, sources told the Financial Times.
President Donald Trump says he didn’t urge Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Russia’s terms to end the war, which included giving up the entire Donbas region
Trump says that he wants the war to stop immediately and that borders should be drawn at the front-line of where the war currently stands
They claim Trump repeated Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s talking points from a call a day before the meeting, including demanding that Zelensky surrender the entire Donbas region to Moscow to bring an end to the war.
But Trump said on Sunday that he ‘never discussed’ giving up the land and instead wants to see the fighting stop immediately and borders be drawn at the front-lines of the war.
‘We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are — the battle lines,’ Trump told reporters when asked about reports he pressed Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms for a ceasefire.
‘The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that’. There are just so many different permutations,’ he added. ‘So what I say is they should stop right now at the battle lines. Go home, stop killing people and be done.’
Trump and Putin announced on Thursday they plan to hold talks on the war in Ukraine at a meeting in Budapest, Turkey in coming weeks.
And now, Zelensky says he is ready to join Trump and Putin for that meeting should he be asked.
‘If it is an invitation in a format where we meet as three or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy… then in one format or another, we will agree,’ Zelensky told reporters on Monday.
A European Union diplomat detailed to Politico how Putin’s call with the U.S. president on Thursday ‘appears to have changed President Trump’s mind on Ukraine once again.’
They also said that the meeting on Friday was not ‘as bleak as reported.’
Trump (left) invited Zelensky (right) for a meeting at the White House on October 17 – a day after the U.S. president held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Reports emerged that Trump repeated Putin’s demands for a ceasefire during his meeting with Zelensky – the president denies these claims
Trump appeared to adopt some of Putin’s talking points verbatim, even when they contradicted his own recent statements about Russia’s weaknesses, claimed the European officials briefed on the meeting.
Those familiar with the bilateral chat recounted to Financial Times a scene where Trump tossed aside maps of the frontline of war in Ukraine as the two world leaders devolved into a ‘shouting match.’
Trump told Zelensky that if he does not accept Russia’s terms for ending the war, Putin would ‘destroy’ Ukraine.
While Zelensky and his team went to the White House last week with the intent of persuading Trump to supply them with long-range Tomahawk missiles, they walked away without striking a deal with Trump.
When asked on Sunday what should happen to the Donbas region, Trump said: ‘Let it be cut the way it is. It’s cut up right now.’
‘I think 78 percent of the land is already taken by Russia,’ he went on. ‘You leave it the way it is right now. They can negotiate something later on down the line.’
Trump has renewed his demands for the war between Russia and Ukraine to end following the ceasefire he organized between Israel and Hamas.
