President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to negotiate a deal to end the war with Russia, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin would like to meet with him soon. Trump made the comments after signing multiple executive orders in the Oval Office.
Trump confirmed that Zelenskyy had told him he is ready to negotiate a solution to the war, which has seen significant loss of life on both sides. “Yes, he’s ready to negotiate a deal. He’d like to stop this,” Trump said. “He’s somebody that lost a lot of soldiers, and so did Russia. … Russia lost 800,000. Would you say that’s a lot? I’d say it’s a lot.”
Trump also suggested that Chinese President Xi Jinping has power over Russia, given the two countries’ close economic ties. He noted that Russia supplies China with a lot of energy, and China pays Russia a lot of money. “I think they have a lot of power over Russia, so I think Russia should want to make a deal,” Trump said.
The war in Ukraine is described by Trump as a “ridiculous war” with soldiers being killed at a rate not seen since World War II. “Soldiers are being killed on a daily basis at numbers that we haven’t seen in decades,” he said. “It would be nice to end that war.”
