By Independent News Roundup
(Photo by TOM BRENNER/AFP via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump, welcoming Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to his Florida resort, said on Sunday that peace talks to end the Russia–Ukraine war are in the “final stages.”
The remark was not necessarily a sign of optimism. “We’re in final stages of talking and we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters. “Otherwise, it’s going to go on for a long time… and millions of additional people are gonna be killed.”
After private talks between the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, the two presidents held a joint press conference and said they had made progress on a revised peace plan put forward by the White House, but they didn’t cite any tangible breakthroughs. “I do think we’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close,” Trump said.
Earlier in the day, Trump talked by phone with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. After the meeting, Trump and Zelensky held a phone call with European leaders. “There was good progress, which we welcomed,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, on X.
Russia has escalated its drone and missile attacks on Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, in recent days, while Ukraine is believed to have assassinated a senior Russian general who died by car bomb in Moscow last week. Trump has made resolving the war a top foreign policy aim, but so far, peace has proved elusive.
Andrew Day is the senior editor of The American Conservative. He has a PhD in political science from Northwestern University. You can follow him on X @AKDay89.
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