Washington.- President Donald Trump pressured his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to concede the Donbas region, which includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, to Russia during the meeting they held recently.
Trump resorted to blasphemous remarks during the tense meeting, sources close to the matter told Reuters, the Financial Times and The Washington Post.
In addition to ruling out the delivery of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Trump reminded Zelensky that he was losing the war and warned: “If (Vladimir) Putin wants it, he will destroy you.”
“Let us hope they won’t need them (Ukraine). Hopefully we can end the war without thinking about the Tomahawks. I think we are quite close to achieving it,” Donald Trump told reporters before meeting Zelensky at the White House.
Zelensky presented to Trump at the White House maps showing the battle fronts in Ukraine, which the Republican tossed aside. “This red line… I don’t even know where it is,” said Trump.
The Ukrainian leader assured in an interview on ABC that “we are not losing the war” and “we have to stay where we are, not give more to Putin.” He also said he was willing to attend the meeting that the Russian would hold with Trump in Hungary.
Diplomatic talks to end the Russian invasion have stalled since the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
The Kremlin said that “many questions” need to be resolved before Putin and Trump can meet, including who would be in each negotiating team.
But it dismissed suggestions that Putin would have difficulty flying over European airspace.
Hungary said it would ensure that Putin could enter and “hold successful talks” with the United States despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.
Trump’s stance on the war in Ukraine has shifted dramatically in recent months.
At the start of his term, Trump and Putin drew closer as the American president labeled Zelensky as a “dictator without elections.”
Tensions reached a critical point in February, when Trump accused his Ukrainian counterpart of “not having the cards” in a heated televised meeting in the Oval Office.
Their relationship has since grown closer, as Trump has expressed mounting frustration with the Russian leader.
But Trump has kept an open line of dialogue and says they “get along well.”
The American leader has repeatedly shifted his stance on sanctions and other measures against Moscow following talks with the Russian president.
Putin ordered a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, describing it as a “special military operation” to demilitarize the country and prevent NATO’s expansion.
Kyiv and its European allies say the war is an illegal seizure of lands that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military casualties and widespread destruction.
Russia now occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, largely devastated by the fighting.
