DONALD Trump has blamed Ukrainian leaders for Russia’s invasion, remarking that the war-torn nation should have made concessions before the outbreak of war.
The President remarked during a news conference in his Florida residence that Ukraine should have never allowed the war to begin, suggesting the country should have been willing to make concessions to Russia before the 2022 invasion.
He said: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you been there for three years. You should have ended it three years ago”
He continued: “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
This follows the first stages of peace talks regarding the war in Ukraine between the United States and Russia, being held in Saudi Arabia.
The two superpowers agreed to start working towards ending the war in Ukraine and improving their diplomatic and economic ties, the two countries’ top diplomats revealed.
In an interview with The Associated Press after the meeting, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the two sides agreed broadly to pursue three goals: to restore staffing at their respective embassies in Washington and Moscow, to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.
He stressed, however, that the talks — which were attended by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and other senior Russian and US officials — marked the beginning of a conversation, and more work needs to be done.
Lavrov echoed Rubio’s remarks and told reporters that “the conversation was very useful”.
“We not only listened, but also heard each other,” he said.
No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would not accept any outcome from the talks since Kyiv did not take part, and he postponed his own trip to the kingdom scheduled for Wednesday.
European allies have also expressed concerns that they are being sidelined, with the Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggesting the UK is prepared to put troops on the ground to protect the peace, during emergency talks in Paris on February 17.
Ties between Russia and the US have fallen to their lowest level in decades in recent years — a rift that has been widening ever since Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and only worsened after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
