DONALD Trump is “disappointed” in Vladimir Putin and has ruled out meeting the tyrant until he stops “wasting his time”.
The US president says there will be no in-person summit unless the Russian despot can prove he is serious about wanting peace in Ukraine.
Speaking on Air Force One on Saturday during his visit across Asia, Trump said: “We’re going to have to know that we’re going to make a deal.
“I’m not going to be wasting my time.
“I’ve always had a great relationship with [Putin], but this has been very disappointing.”
The Republican strongman added that he is shocked there is yet to be a resolution despite months of attempts to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table.
Trump has been a key player in resolving several conflicts across the globe since he returned to the Oval Office in January.
He has been commended for helping broker peace in longlasting wars in Europe, Africa, Asia and most notably the Middle East in Gaza.
Trump explained: “I thought [the Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal] would have been more difficult than Russia and Ukraine, but it didn’t work out that way.
“There’s a lot of hatred between the two — between Zelensky and Putin. There’s tremendous hatred.”
Just two days earlier, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said a Trump–Putin summit is “not completely off the table”.
She said that Trump has seen “not enough interest and enough action” from Russia to hold talks yet.
“The President and the entire administration hopes that one day that could happen again,” Leavitt said.
“But we want to make sure that there’s a tangible, positive outcome out of that meeting, and that it’s a good use of the President’s time.”
It comes after a turbulent week has pushed back any hopes of ending the bloodshed in Ukraine.
Trump slapped punishing sanctions on two Russian oil companies on Wednesday after the Kremlin was all but ostracised by Washington for its refusal to accept a peace deal in Ukraine.
When announcing the sanctions, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the companies are responsible for “funding the Kremlin‘s war machine”.
Trump says he hopes the sanctions will be a wake-up call for Putin to become more “reasonable” over what it will take for a deal to be made.
The move was a stark reminder of how fragile peace negotiations are proving to be for Kyiv, Moscow and Washington.
At the start of the week hopes were high of Putin finally coming to the negotiating table.
He and Trump had held a phone call some days earlier where they agreed to meet in Hungary to discuss the next steps.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held a phone call of their own to iron out details ahead of the meeting.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15398322/trump-refuses-meet-putin-ukraine-peace/
