Donald Trump has damaged peace hopes for Ukraine, says an ex-head of Britain’s army.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy will host a Ukraine meeting in London on Wednesday, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio set to attend, to push for a ceasefire deal.
But Lord Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff, believes a peace pact is “not very close at all”.
Ahead of his re-election for a second term, Trump claimed he could end Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine in a day.
Once back in the White House, he pushed this timescale back to 100 days.
But Lord Dannatt told Times Radio: “Frankly, what has been done over the last couple of months, since Donald Trump came to power, has damaged the chance of peace, has damaged the possibility of an independent future for Ukraine.”
Trump has sought to build ties with Putin while at the same time launching scathing attacks on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, including bizarrely branding him a “dictator”, and accusing Kyiv of starting the conflict.
Lord Dannatt stressed that the Trump administration had weakened Ukraine’s position, adding: “in some ways you could say almost playing to Putin’s agenda”.
He believes the US should have instead strengthened support for Kyiv and put pressure on Russia’s economy to force Putin to the negotiating table.
European powers told the US last week which aspects of a potential peace deal between Ukraine and Russia would be non-negotiable for them, ahead of the new round of discussions on Wednesday, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.
Ahead of the talks in London involving Ukraine, the US, France, Britain and Germany, Mr Barrot emphasised that European leaders had laid out “red lines”.
He also dismissed Putin’s so-called “Easter truce” as a “marketing operation, a seduction operation aimed at avoiding that President Trump gets impatient”.
Despite repeated violations of the truce, he said there had at least been a drop in intensity regarding drones and long-range missiles, which could perhaps open the door for a ceasefire.
On the battlefield, Russian forces launched a mass overnight drone attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, wounding three people and damaging many apartments, local officials said early on Tuesday.
“The enemy targeted a residential area in a densely populated district of Odesa,” said Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov, sharing pictures of a fire blazing and apartment buildings with windows smashed and facades damaged.
Governor Oleh Kiper said that three people were injured in the attack and were receiving medical help.
The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday that Russia launched 54 drones in an attack overnight, of which 38 were shot down and 16 did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic warfare countermeasures.
Russia’s air defence units reportedly destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones overnight, downing half of them over the Crimean Peninsula.
