Trump says it’s ‘more difficult’ to deal with Ukraine than Russia in peace efforts
US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it “more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine” than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.
The US is “doing very well with Russia”, and “it may be easier dealing with” Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
Hours earlier, Trump had said he was “strongly considering” large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached.
Meanwhile, the US has temporarily suspended Ukraine’s access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify, after Trump had already paused military aid to the country.
It comes exactly one week after an extraordinary White House exchange, in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for being “disrespectful” to the US.
That public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
Russia then conducted a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.
Trump’s threat of further sanctions on the already heavily sanctioned Russia was apparently in response to this attack. He said he was considering new tariffs because “Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now”.
But within hours, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin was acting as anyone else would.
“I think he’s hitting them [Ukraine] harder than he’s been hitting them,” Trump said. “And I think probably anyone in that position would be doing that right now.”
He added that he believes Putin wants to end the war but he cannot say the same of Ukraine.
“I want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don’t know they want to settle,” Trump said, when asked why he had cut off aid to Kyiv.
Trump’s direct diplomacy with Putin stunned Nato allies, because the West has shunned contacts with Moscow since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Despite Trump’s row with Zelensky, the tone from his foreign policy team in the last two days has sounded more conciliatory towards Ukraine, after its arm-wrenching in the form of cutting off military and intelligence support.
The Americans want Zelensky to sign a deal that would give them a major stake in Ukrainian minerals, and for him to agree to a quick truce with Moscow.
Zelensky has been pushing for firm security guarantees for Kyiv, to be agreed as part of the deal. Speaking on Friday, Trump said such a security guarantee could be discussed later and would be the “easy part”.
Meanwhile, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify on Friday that the US had temporarily suspended Ukrainian access to some high quality imagery from US satellites.
Satellite imagery is an important tool during a war as it allows armies to gather intelligence on their rivals.
Maxar, a US-based company, has contracts to provide satellite imagery to various governments and companies.
One of those is the Global Enhanced GEOINT Deliver (GEGD) program, which gives users access to high quality imagery collected by the US government.
“The US government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts in GEGD,” Maxar told the BBC. “Each customer makes their own decisions on how they use and share that data.”
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, part of the US Department of Defense, confirmed the suspension was “in accordance with the administration’s directive on support to Ukraine”.
Next week, Trump’s senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Zelensky’s team amid growing pressure for him to sign up to Trump’s demands.
Ukraine’s president has said he hopes the talks will be “meaningful”. On Friday, he said his country was “ready for peace as soon as possible” and had proposed “concrete steps” to achieve it.
“Every day, new Russian strikes and reality itself prove that it is Russia that must be forced to peace,” he added.
Zelensky has expressed regret in the days since his public clash with Trump and worked to mend relations with the US.
On Thursday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Trump had received a letter from Zelensky that included an “apology” and “sense of gratitude”.
“Hopefully, we get things back on track with the Ukrainians, and everything resumes,” Witkoff said.
UK officials have said around 20 countries are interested in joining a “coalition of the willing” to help Ukraine, as European leaders forge ahead with plans for much bigger military expenditure.
Fighting on the ground in Ukraine continued on Friday, with five people killed by Russian troops in the Donetsk region, according to local authorities.
BBC
