AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File
- Trump said Russia and Ukraine aren’t “working out some kind of an agreement.”
- Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said peace talks with Ukraine have come to a dead end.
- “No one trusts Russia now,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN.
Former US President Donald Trump said “it doesn’t make sense” why Russia and Ukraine haven’t yet come to an “agreement.”
Although Moscow and Kyiv had intermittent peace talks in Turkey last month, the conversations yielded few solutions as Russia continues its unprovoked military onslaught on Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin initially ordered to suspend military operations as the countries first entered negotiations, but Russia later continued its operation in Ukraine. Last week, Putin said peace talks with Ukraine have come to a dead end.
“It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement,” Trump said in the Monday statement. “If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage.”
“This is a war that never should have happened, but it did,” the former president continued. “The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now — not later — when everyone will be DEAD!”
The Monday statement comes weeks after Trump initially praised Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine as “genius” and “savvy.” Just one week later, he then condemned the invasion as a “holocaust” in a stark shift.
Earlier this month, Russian forces withdrew from the area around Kyiv after attempting to capture the Ukrainian capital. The Russian army repositioned from the area to focus on the eastern Donbas region in Ukraine, Pentagon and NATO officials said.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said negotiations could come to an end if Ukrainian forces stationed in the besieged city of Mariupol are killed by the Russian army.
“We wanted to take away the wounded. We talked about it being a humanitarian mission. Give us the wounded back!” Zelenskyy said in an interview with CNN on Monday. “We even made plans for Turkey to be a mediator and get the wounded, civilians, and the military. They don’t let them out because we understand Russia just wants to shoot them dead.”
The Ukrainian leader added that Ukraine’s remaining defenders in Mariupol are unwilling to surrender to Russia.
“They say they are ready to let all the military go if they surrender, but they are not going to surrender. They don’t want to do so and this is why it is a complicated and tragic situation because the military doesn’t want to surrender,” Zelenskyy said. “And without it, Russians are not ready to let them go.”
He added: “When you can make an agreement with Russians to let them go, unarmed, but after, what they will do is shoot them dead. That is why no one trusts Russia now.”
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