Donald Trump has claimed that Vladimir Putin “wants to stop fighting” in Ukraine and suggested that a meeting with the Russian president could take place “soon.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday at Palm Beach International airport after getting off Air Force One on the return trip from Daytona, the US president said both Russia and Ukraine were seeking an end to the war.
“I think he [Putin] wants to stop fighting. I see that. We spoke long and hard,” Trump said, adding that his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, had spent about three hours with Putin. “They have a big, powerful machine. You understand that. They defeated Hitler and they defeated Napoleon. They have been fighting a long time. They’ve done it before.”
Trump dismissed the idea that Putin intends to seize the whole of Ukraine. “I think he wants to stop. That was my question to him, because if he’s going to go on, that would have been a big problem for us. And that would have caused me a big problem, because you just can’t let that happen. I think he wants to end it. And they want to end it fast, both of them. And Zelenskyy wants to end it too.”
He lamented the destruction caused by the war. “It’s really too bad. A lot of people are dead right now that should be alive, and a lot of cities are destroyed that can never come back like they were. Those beautiful golden domes, and all of the multicolored domes that were 1,000 years old. They’re all laying in, you know, just shattered. So it’s very sad. They ruined the culture.”
Asked whether he would allow Europeans to buy US-made weapons for Ukraine, Trump said simply: “Yeah, I would.”
On the prospect of a meeting with Putin in Saudi Arabia, Trump said it could take place “very soon.” Pressed on the exact timing, he added: “Well, it’ll be soon. We’ll see what happens. But they’re meeting right now, and that’s more… I mean, this should have been done four years ago, three years ago before it started, but it should have been done immediately after it started, as opposed to now three years later.”
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