Trump says he has great hope of being able to bring an end to the war. He does not care much for the negative reactions from Ukraine and its other allies about the USA holding the first talks with Russia without Ukrainian involvement.
When the President appeared at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, he was asked what he would say to Ukrainians who feel betrayed.
Today I heard "Oh, we weren't invited". But you've been there for three years, said Trump.
You should never have started it. You could have made a "deal".
"They'll understand better"
Next week it will be three years since Russia launched a large-scale attack on its neighboring country, with sweeping accusations that the country is ruled by a coup-installed Nazi regime, that Ukraine as a state has no legitimate basis and that its aspirations to join NATO pose a threat to Russia.
Russia returns to the so-called Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in 2014, which in the Kremlin's historiography did not build on Ukrainians' democratic aspirations but on a foreign plot against Russian interests.
After the meeting between the US and Russian foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday – which broke the Western world's sharp distancing – it became clear that the countries are re-establishing diplomatic ties and continuing talks with each other.
The day after, Trump was praised by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov when he appeared in the State Duma in Moscow:
He is the only one and so far, in my opinion, the only leader in the West who has clearly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the previous (American) government's stubborn stance on drawing Ukraine into NATO.
Questioning Zelenskyj
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has said that he will never agree to an agreement that has been negotiated over the Ukrainians' heads.
The new US government has made large demands for compensation from Ukraine in order for continued support to be relevant. Zelenskyj is reported to have emphasized to Donald Trump that the USA can put pressure on economically pressured Russia.
In his appearance at Mar-a-Lago, Trump hinted that Zelenskyj's own mandate can be questioned since Ukraine has not held elections during the ongoing invasion – something that Russia has long wanted to highlight as a crucial obstacle to continued talks.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian forces met strong resistance and a multi-year war ensued. Russian forces entered the neighboring country as early as 2014, which then led to the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and a simmering conflict in Donbass in the east.
The independent Ukraine's balancing act between East and West had been put to the test in 2014, when widespread demonstrations broke out against the Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych after he backed out of a cooperation agreement with the EU. During a few days, over 100 people were killed in the protests. Yanukovych was ousted by parliament and fled to Moscow.
When Russia's President Vladimir Putin launched the large-scale war, he claimed to have demanded a veto right if Ukraine wants to join NATO. He has asserted that the state of Ukraine has no right to exist, with lies about its democratically elected government being a "Nazi regime" that commits genocide against ethnic Russians.
Ukraine's allies, primarily the USA and EU, have provided the Ukrainian defense with significant support and punished Russia with sanctions for the war of aggression. In Moscow, the war has over time come to be described in existential terms, as a conflict between Russia and a united Western world.
