US President Donald Trump said he exchanged “pretty strong words” with the leaders of France, Britain and Germany on Ukraine, in the latest sign of a growing rift on how to end Russia’s invasion.
Speaking in Washington yesterday, Trump added that the Europeans wanted to hold fresh talks over the weekend of December 13 to 14 but warned that that they risked “wasting time” amid divisions over a US plan to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, AFP reported.
That came after Trump deepened his rift with Europe in an interview on December 9, calling it “decaying” and blasting key allies as “weak” over immigration and Ukraine, according to Le Monde.
In response, the UK’s foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said all she saw in Europe was “strength”, citing investment in defence as well as funding for Kyiv.
She added two Presidents were “working for peace” – referring to Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – and “one President – President Putin – has so far simply sought to escalate the conflict with further drone and missile attacks”, the BBC reported.
Trump continued to increase pressure on Zelensky to agree to a peace deal, and urged him to “play ball” by ceding territory to Moscow. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Zelensky, writing on X later the same day, said Ukraine and Europe were working actively on “all components of potential steps toward ending the war”, and that the Ukrainian and European elements of the plan were now more developed.
Yesterday, when asked about the phone call with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump said: “We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words.
“I think we had some little disputes about people and we’re going to see how it turns out. And we said, before we go to a meeting, we want to know some things,” he added, according to AFP.
“They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe and we’ll make a determination depending on what they come back with. We don’t want to be wasting time.”
Trump has been pushing Zelensky to agree to the US plan and had accused him of not reading it.
But Ukrainian officials said yesterday that Kyiv had sent an updated draft of the plan to Washington.
An initial US plan that involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia has not captured was seen by Kyiv and its European allies as aligning too closely with many of Russia’s hardline demands and has since been revised.
Talks between US officials and Putin in the Kremlin on. Decemeber 2 also failed to reach a breakthrough.
On December 7, Trump suggested, without evidence, that Zelensky was the main obstacle to peace.
He told reporters that Russia was “fine” with the peace plan outlined to both sides by the US, that contained major concessions for Ukraine and which allies feared would leave it vulnerable to a future invasion, the BBC reported.
Trump’s latest comments come amid a growing rift with Europe after he described it as “decaying” and “weak” on immigration and Ukraine, days after a new US National Security Strategy said the continent risked “civilisational erasure”.
The US leader, meanwhile, gave the latest in a series of hints that he may walk away from a conflict he blames on his predecessor Joe Biden and which he once said he could end within 24 hours of returning to office in January, according to AFP.
“Sometimes you have to let people fight it out and sometimes you don’t,” Trump said yesterday.
“But the problem with letting people fight it out is that you’re losing thousands of people a week. It’s ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous.”
