Trump says he plans to hold talks on Ukraine in coming days

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he intends to hold fresh talks on the conflict in Ukraine in the coming days, after his August summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska failed to produce progress.

Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the fighting, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He had initially predicted he could bring the conflict to a close quickly after taking office in January last year.

The White House said Trump is expected to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy by phone on Thursday. The French presidency added that several European leaders, including Zelenskiy and French President Emmanuel Macron, will join a call with Trump later the same day. The conversation is expected to follow a mostly virtual meeting of around 30 countries, hosted by France, on security support for Ukraine once a peace deal with Russia is reached. European leaders are also expected to criticise Moscow’s refusal to engage in negotiations.

Putin has shown little interest in ending the war, despite both leaders striking an optimistic tone during their August 15 meeting in Anchorage. “I have no message to President Putin,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with Polish President Karol Nawrocki at the White House. “He knows where I stand and he’ll make a decision one way or another. Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy about it, and if we’re unhappy, you’ll see things happen,” he said, without elaborating.

Trump added that while he still believed the conflict would eventually be resolved “one way or the other,” he admitted he underestimated the difficulty of achieving peace. “I thought that would be much easier,” he said. “I thought that would be in the middle of the pack, maybe one of the easiest. Sometimes you never know with war.”

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