Donald Trump said on Monday he would talk to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the “carnage” of the nearly three-year war, as the Kremlin leader praised Russian military successes on the ground.
Both sides are racing to make gains on the battlefield before Trump enters the White House in January, and there are some concerns in Ukraine that it will be forced to make territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
Trump has been highly critical of the billions of dollars in aid that Joe Biden’s administration provided Kiev to fight off Moscow’s aggression.
He spoke at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, as Putin praised his military’s growing progress in Ukraine in what he called a “historic” year.
“We’ll talk to President Putin, and we’ll talk to representatives, Zelensky and representatives of Ukraine,” Trump said.
“We have to stop it, it’s genocide,” he said, referring to the war.
Trump has repeatedly claimed he can end the conflict rapidly but has not provided concrete details on how.
His comments on Monday came after he called for an “immediate ceasefire” earlier this month and said “negotiations must begin.”
Trump met Zelensky this month in Paris at a meeting hosted by French leader Emmanuel Macron, after which the Ukrainian leader said he had argued that Kiev was seeking “permanent” peace and “security guarantees.”
Ukraine’s ally and neighbor Poland urged on Monday that Kiev should not be “forced” into peace talks, with its Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorsky saying that to do so “is to encourage and force the aggressor, not the victim.” Must go”.
-Putin praised Russian gains –
Ukraine is entering another winter of war as its energy grid is already badly damaged by Russian attacks and Trump spoke as Russian troops were almost at the gates of the key eastern city of Pokrovsk.
Addressing top military generals at a year-end meeting on Monday, Putin struck a defiant and optimistic tone, claiming his troops dominated the entire front line.
The comments come as Russian troops advance into eastern Ukraine at their fastest pace since the first weeks of the invasion.
“Russian troops are firmly holding the strategic initiative along the entire contact line,” Putin said.
He said Russia’s military has seized 189 Ukrainian settlements this year and, using Moscow’s official language for its campaign, called 2024 “a landmark year in the achievement of the goals of the special military operation.”
Speaking after Putin at the same meeting, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said that Russian troops had captured about 4,500 square kilometers (1,737 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in total this year and were now moving about 30 square kilometers a day. Are achieving.
Russia’s military said on Monday it had captured another small village in the Donetsk region in its latest advance.
An AFP analysis of Institute for the Study of War data found that Russian troops in November advanced at their fastest pace since March 2022 – the first full month of the offensive.
– ‘Dangerous expansion’ –
Putin has been accused by Kiev and the West in recent weeks of escalating the nearly three-year-old conflict.
On Monday, ten countries and the European Union called North Korea’s increased involvement in the conflict a “dangerous escalation” of the fighting that would have “serious consequences for European and Indo-Pacific security.”
The foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Britain, the United States, and the High Representative of the European Union signed the communiqué.
It came as Ukraine said it had killed or wounded at least 30 North Korean soldiers fighting with Russian troops in the Kursk border region, where Kiev is waging an offensive.
The United States, South Korea and Ukraine have accused North Korea of sending more than 10,000 troops to support Russia.
Putin also defended Russia’s huge defense and security spending on the conflict on Monday amid growing economic uncertainty domestically.
Military spending has exceeded six percent of GDP, while total defense and security outlay is about nine percent.
“Surprisingly, this is not the largest expenditure in the world, even among countries where there is no armed conflict,” said Putin, a former KGB spy who has held power for the past quarter century.
“Still, it’s a lot of money, and here we need to use it very rationally,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
