With Iran “in the rear view mirror” his attention is back on solving the Ukraine War, President Donald Trump said, as he said it was time for Russia to make a deal.
“Tremendous” numbers of people are being killed in the Ukraine war every month and it is time for peace, U.S. President Donald Trump said at a G7 bilateral on Tuesday morning.
That the President’s focus is on bringing peace to Europe was underlined at the second day of the G7 summit in the spa town of Evian, France, was underlined for all to see when the main leaders’ multilateral talks were delayed by almost an hour because President Trump, French President and summit host Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t turn up.
President Trump later revealed he’d had pull-aside talks with Zelensky this morning, apparently leaving other world leaders wondering what was happening and waiting on their arrival in the conference room.
Holding a later bilateral with the Emir of Qatar, with whom remarks naturally mostly focussed on the Iran war, President Trump also spoke out on the Ukraine war, revealing his earlier “good” Zelensky meeting and saying another such bilateral was planned for later in the day. The U.S. leader said: “Look, Russia should make a deal. Russia’s lost tremendous amounts of people, and so has Ukraine.
“Last month, they lost 35,000 soldiers between the two of them. Think of that, on a monthly basis they averaged 25,000 people, mostly soldiers, young, beautiful people.”
Trump noted he’d also recently spoken to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and said the Russian and Ukrainian leaders had a “lot of dislike” between them that they would have to get over.
President Trump’s focus on Iran of recent weeks will now shift back to Ukraine, he said, observing: “We were focussed on Iran, and now that’s going to be in the rear view mirror.”
Reflecting on talks so far, Zelensky wrote on Tuesday afternoon that he thanked attending world leaders for their “strong ideas on how to force Russia into peace”. He said he wanted “more air defense missiles” and a winter support package and stated: “It is key that everything discussed be implemented. Russia must come to learn that its war will never be normalized”.
Russia itself is not present at the G7 summit — it was kicked out of the then-G8 in 2014 — but has been commenting on goings-on from the sidelines through its spokesmen in Moscow. Responding to the notion there might be leader talks between their President Putin and Ukraine’s Zelensky, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov facetiously suggested talks could be held in Moscow.