What a dud
Ukrainian President Zelensky and five other European leaders joined a conference call with President Trump immediately after his call with Vladimir Putin on Monday hoping to hear that Putin had agreed to a ceasefire — or the U.S. would impose penalties on him for refusing to do so.
Instead, Trump said Putin had agreed to negotiate, stressed the U.S. wouldn’t be involved in those negotiations, and pushed back against the idea of imposing sanctions on Putin at the current time, two sources who were on the call and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.
Trump gave the impression he was getting closer to withdrawing from the issue altogether. Some leaders on the call seemed “surprised” or “shocked,” the sources said.
“I think something’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away and they’re going to have to keep going. Again, this was a European situation, and should have remained a European situation,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office several hours after his calls.
Played like a fiddle. Vlad wants him to take his ball and go home and so he will. What an incredible loser.
Trump told the leaders that Putin agreed to start direct negotiations on a ceasefire immediately. A source on the call said there were a few seconds of puzzled silence.
Zelensky then pointed out that Putin had previously agreed to negotiate, and the first round of ceasefire talks took place on Friday in Istanbul. Trump didn’t directly respond, the sources said.
The sources said Zelensky and several other leaders on the call told Trump it had been his idea to start the peace talks with an immediate 30-day ceasefire.
A White House official told Axios Trump “never agreed” that a ceasefire should be a prerequisite for negotiations and never said Zelensky can decide what the conditions for negotiations will be.
That’s bullshit. Trump marched around saying he’s demanded a ceasefire. I guess Vlad really gave him a talking to. He’s not going to do that again.
Other European leaders on the call asked about the possibility of U.S. sanctions against Russia, but Trump said he didn’t think was a good idea and stressed that he thought Putin wanted a deal.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni jumped in to ask why there couldn’t be a ceasefire for at least two weeks heading into the talks, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz asked what concessions Russia was willing to make, the sources said.
Trump told the group Putin would present a “peace memo” with his terms for a ceasefire and for ending the war. A source on the call said Trump told Zelensky and the European leaders he asked Putin to present “something people can agree to” and not a proposal that will be rejected immediately.
Oh, that’s precious. Putin will give his terms. The White House said later that getting him to put them in a memo was a big concession. No wonder Vlad was so happy yesterday.
Leaders on the call seemed surprised that Trump seemed relatively content with what he heard from Putin, and presented it as a new development, even though the Russian leader did not seem to have changed his position at all, the sources said.
Trump told the group that Russia and Ukraine should conduct bilateral direct negotiations without any third party mediators because the parties best understand all the details of the conflict.
On the call, Finland President Alexander Stubb asked Trump what the next steps were. “I don’t know. Someone has to come out and say whether the negotiations are going well or badly, and then we’ll decide what to do,” Trump said.
I think he was tired. It was a big day for him and he’d been up half the night tweeting about Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce. He needed a nap.
Seriously, as usual he got rolled by Putin. Which is actually fine with him — he hates Zelensky and Ukraine because of the first impeachment. And since he’s never held to anything he says, who cares if he promised to end the war on day one? And anyway if Vlad goes after a NATO country, Trump’s pretty much said he won’t respond so why bother?
We are really playing with fire now. The whole world sees what a paper tiger this loudmouth bully boy really is.