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(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said he remains committed to pursuing a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine despite uncertainty over the prospect of face-to-face talks between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy, CBS News said in a report published on Thursday.
“I’ve been watching it, I’ve been seeing it, and I’ve been talking about it with President Putin and President Zelenskiy,” Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News on Wednesday. “Something is going to happen, but they are not ready yet. But something is going to happen. We are going to get it done.”
Trump earlier on Wednesday said he plans to hold talks about the war in Ukraine in coming days after his Alaska summit with Putin in August failed to achieve a breakthrough. A White House official said Trump is expected to speak on the phone on Thursday with Zelenskiy.
Putin also said on Wednesday he is ready to meet with Zelenskiy if the Ukrainian president came to Moscow but that any such meeting had to be well prepared and lead to tangible results. Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed the suggestion of Moscow as a venue for such a meeting.
Trump told CBS News he is unhappy with the carnage between Russia and Ukraine but will keep pushing for a peace agreement.
“I think we’re going to get it all straightened out. Frankly, the Russia one, I thought, would have been on the easier side of the ones I’ve stopped, but it seems to be something that’s a little bit more difficult than some of the others,” he said.
Trump has been frustrated at his inability to get a halt to the fighting, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after he initially predicted he would be able to end the war swiftly when he took office in January.
Trump said on Wednesday that he watched China’s “beautiful ceremony” marking the end of World War Two, where Putin was seen alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“I understand the reason they were doing it, and they were hoping I was watching, and I was watching,” Trump told CBS News. “My relationship with all of them is very good. We’re going to find out how good it is over the next week or two.”
Trump said on Tuesday he was “very disappointed” with Putin, and suggested in a post on Truth Social that Xi, Putin and Kim were conspiring against the United States.
The Kremlin said Putin was not conspiring against the U.S. and suggested Trump was being ironic in his remarks.
Putin said that all countries with which Russia held talks in China supported the Russia-U.S. summit in Alaska and had expressed hopes that the talks could help end the war in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Mrinmay Dey; Editing by Kim Coghill and Lincoln Feast.)
