War in Ukraine | Trump urges Putin to negotiate peace ‘deal’

(Washington) American President Donald Trump, just inaugurated on Monday, for the first time called on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to find a peace “agreement” with Ukraine, otherwise Russia risked being “destroyed” .

By congratulating earlier on the 47^e President of the United States, the master of the Kremlin also assured to seek “a lasting peace” with Kyiv.

The Republican billionaire, re-elected on November 5, has repeatedly affirmed that he is preparing a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to “put an end” to this conflict, triggered by the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

As he returned to the Oval Office to sign a flurry of executive orders, Donald Trump reaffirmed that he “had to speak to President Putin […] who will be very satisfied to end this war.”

But, for the first time, he clearly put pressure on him by judging that Russia would be heading for disaster if it refused to negotiate and seal a ceasefire or peace agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Zelensky wants a deal”

“Zelensky wants to make a deal. I don’t know if Putin wants that, maybe not. [Mais] he should do it. I believe he is destroying Russia by not finding a settlement,” said Donald Trump.

Back at the head of the world’s leading power, the American tribune, already president from 2017 to 2021, has repeatedly denounced during the campaign the tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid poured into Kyiv by the Joe Biden administration.

“Russia is facing big problems. Look at the economy, the inflation,” the new president told journalists in the Oval Office, noting that Moscow had counted in February 2022 on a “war over in a week and that we are three years away.”

“I get along very well with him [M. Poutine] and I hope he wants to make an agreement,” concluded the former businessman, a fan of transactional diplomacy.

The Russian president, for his part, repeated Monday that he was “open to dialogue with the new American administration on the Ukrainian conflict.”

“The goal should not be a brief truce […] but a lasting peace,” he insisted.

Donald Trump promised during his campaign to end the conflict in Ukraine “in 24 hours” and called for an “immediate ceasefire” and talks.

He later acknowledged that the process could take months.

The Kremlin is still officially calling for Ukraine to surrender, for it to renounce joining NATO and for Russia to keep the Ukrainian territories for which it claimed annexation.

“Peace through strength”

As for President Zelensky, he also congratulated Donald Trump on his X account, whose “policy of peace through force […] provides an opportunity to strengthen American leadership and achieve a just and lasting peace, the top priority.”

For Moscow, the “special military operation” launched in Ukraine almost three years ago boils down to an existential confrontation against Washington and its European allies, accused of supporting a government in Kyiv presented as illegitimate, neo-Nazi and hostile to Moscow.

Accusations brushed aside by Ukraine and its supporters for whom the conflict was caused by Russia’s desire to keep its neighbor under its influence since the pro-European revolution of 2014.

On the front, Moscow has slowly but surely gained ground in recent months, while the exhausted Ukrainian army lacks resources.

Russian and Ukrainian losses are a sensitive subject and the figures are difficult to verify: according to various estimates, the conflict has left hundreds of thousands dead and injured on both sides.