US President Donald Trump said that he remains committed to pursuing a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine despite mounting uncertainty over the prospect of face-to-face talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, CBS News reported on Thursday.
“I’ve been watching it, I’ve been seeing it, and I’ve been talking about it with President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News on Wednesday.
“Something is going to happen, but they are not ready yet. But something is going to happen. We are going to get it done.”
Trump on Wednesday said he plans to hold talks about the war in Ukraine in coming days after his Alaska summit with Putin in August failed to achieve a breakthrough.
A White House official said Trump is expected to speak on the phone on Thursday with Zelenskyy.
“Russia is not going to discuss the fundamentally unacceptable, undermining any kind of security, foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form, in any format,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at an economic forum in Russia's far east.
Meanwhile, Russia signalled a hardening of its stance ahead of upcoming European talks with Zelenskyy, declaring it would not consider the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine “in any format”, according to foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Ukraine’s security guarantees
In a related statement, Moscow also criticised Kiev’s push for security guarantees from European allies, calling them a threat to regional stability.
Zakharova described the proposed guarantees as “a springboard for terror” and “guarantees of danger to the European continent”.
Putin also said on Wednesday he is ready to meet with Zelenskyy if the Ukrainian president came to Moscow but that any such meeting had to be well prepared and lead to tangible results.
Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed the suggestion of Moscow as a venue for such a meeting.
Trump told CBS News he is unhappy with the carnage between Russia and Ukraine but will keep pushing for a peace agreement.
“I think we’re going to get it all straightened out. Frankly, the Russia one, I thought, would have been on the easier side of the ones I’ve stopped, but it seems to be something that’s a little bit more difficult than some of the others,” he said.
Trump has been frustrated at his inability to get a halt to the fighting, which began with Russia’s full-scale military offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, after he initially predicted he would be able to end the conflict swiftly when he took office in January.
