Trump appealed to Kiev and Moscow to begin negotiations in a message on his online platform Truth Social on Sunday. Zelenskyj is seeking a “deal” with Russia to end the war, assured the Republican, who will begin his second term in the White House on January 20th. He met with Zelenskyj in Paris on Saturday, and French head of state Emmanuel Macron also took part in the conversation.
“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and end the madness,” Trump said on Sunday, warning against an expansion of the Ukraine conflict: “Too many lives are being wasted senselessly, too many families are being destroyed, and if it continues,… “It will become something much bigger and much worse.”
Trump announced during the election campaign that he would end the Ukraine war “within 24 hours” – but to date he has not explained how exactly he wants to achieve this. Ukraine fears that if a peace agreement is reached, it will have to make far-reaching concessions and cede territory to Russia.
After the meeting in Paris, Zelenskyj again rejected such requests, while at the same time demanding “strong security guarantees” for his country. Ukraine needs a “just and lasting peace – one that the Russians cannot destroy in a few years, as they have repeatedly done in the past,” he said.
Moscow, in turn, accused Ukraine of “refusing” to negotiate an end to the war. At the same time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that his country’s conditions for starting peace talks had not changed – these include, among other things, Kiev’s renunciation of four Ukrainian regions.
The trip to Paris was Trump’s first trip abroad and his first meeting with many of his future colleagues since his election at the beginning of November. The official occasion was the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, which was badly damaged by fire in 2019, and Zelenskyj also came to the French capital.
When it comes to Ukraine policy, Trump wants to clearly distance himself from his predecessor Joe Biden, under whom the USA was Ukraine’s strongest supporter. On Saturday, the outgoing US government announced additional military aid worth $988 million (around €934 million) for Kiev. The new aid package includes drones, tanks, ammunition for rocket launchers and equipment and spare parts for artillery systems, the US Department of Defense announced.
According to Zelensky, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have already been killed and 370,000 others injured since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022. Of the 370,000 wounded, half had returned to the battlefield, the Ukrainian president wrote on online networks on Sunday, in an extremely rare statement of his army’s losses. Moscow also provides hardly any information about soldiers killed and injured. Experts assume that the true figures are significantly higher than the rare official information.
In recent weeks, Ukraine has been confronted with massive Russian attacks on its infrastructure and also on towns along the front. On Sunday, the Defense Ministry in Moscow reported the capture of another village in the Donetsk region, where the Russian army is currently advancing steadily.
