Trump puts onus on Zelenskyy to end conflict with Russia ahead of meeting
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on February 25, 2025 shows US President Donald Trump (L) on February 22, 2025, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 12, 2025.. Ukraine has agreed on the terms of a minerals deal with the United States and could sign it February 28, 2025, the two countries said, a move Kyiv hopes will lead to future security guarantees from Washington.
Alex Wroblewskitetiana Dzhafarova | Afp | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday the onus to end the war between Moscow and Kyiv is on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Zelenskyy could “end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight.”
“Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE,” Trump added in the post, mirroring demands by the Kremlin for recognition of its annexation of Crimea and for Ukraine to be excluded from the NATO alliance.
Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, a move that was widely condemned by the international community. Moscow then launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Trump’s comments come ahead of an Aug. 18 meeting in Washington with Zelenskyy and a number of European leaders.
The gathering follows Trump’s Aug. 15 talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska, which lasted three hours but did not yield a ceasefire agreement, though the U.S. President described the talks as “productive.”
Trump reportedly told Zelenskyy after the meeting with Putin that Moscow had offered to freeze most of the front lines in Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv withdrawing from the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Zelenskyy had rejected the proposal ahead of the summit, saying this would deprive Ukraine of key defensive positions and allow Moscow to launch further offensives into Ukraine. Kyiv currently holds about one quarter of Donetsk, including its so-called “fortress belt” of cities, which has been its main fortified defensive line since 2014.
In an Aug. 12 report, Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said “Putin’s reported proposal reportedly demands that Ukraine concede this critical defensive position, which Russian forces currently have no means of rapidly enveloping or penetrating, apparently in exchange for nothing.”
In a Fox News interview after the meeting with Putin, Trump urged Zelenskyy to strike a deal to end the war in Ukraine. “Look, Russia is a very big power, and [Ukraine is] not. They’re great soldiers,” he said.
In 2024, then-U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said to the United Nations: “If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.”
ISW also highlighted in a separate report on Aug. 17 that Russia’s demands to address the “root causes” of the war are massive NATO concessions that would jeopardize the alliance’s integrity, as well as the security of Europe and the U.S.
Moscow has said any peace agreement must eliminate the “root causes” of the war, a term that includes NATO’s eastward expansion, and the alleged discrimination against Russian speakers in Ukraine.
