US President Donald Trump on Tuesday objected to Ukraine's objections that it was excluded from US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at ending the war in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago mansion, Trump said: "Today I heard, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years ago. You should never have started it."
He also seemed to imply that Ukraine was to blame for the war that started after Russia invaded the country.
Trump has shown little patience with Ukraine's objections that it was excluded from the Saudi talks. He has repeatedly said that Ukrainian officials should never have allowed the conflict to begin, and suggested that Kiev should have been willing to make concessions to Russia before sending troops to Ukraine in 2022.
Such comments, and Trump's goal of mending relations with Moscow, may come at the expense of the U.S.-European transatlantic alliance and significantly damage Washington's standing in Ukraine and with other countries that rely on U.S. leadership in NATO and elsewhere for their security and protection.
"A half-way negotiator could have resolved this years ago without losing a lot of territory, very little territory, without losing lives," Trump said, reiterating his frequent claim that he could have prevented the Russian invasion.
Trump said he thinks he has a "good chance" of ending Russia's war in Ukraine, but objected to suggestions that the US and Russia have begun negotiations to end the fighting, which has occurred without Ukraine playing a role.
No intention to exclude Europe
Neither Ukraine nor European countries were invited to Tuesday's talks in Riyadh, but U.S. officials said they have no intention of excluding them from the peace negotiations if they are indeed launched.
"No one is sidelined here," said the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "Obviously, there will be engagement and consultation with Ukraine, our partners in Europe and others. But ultimately the Russian side will be indispensable to this effort."
Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz noted that Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately after his conversation with Putin last week and that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Rubio met with Zelensky in Germany on Friday.
Still, Zelensky was clearly upset at being left out of the meeting and postponed plans for a visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to avoid any connection between his trip and Tuesday's US-Russian talks.
And that was before Trump's comments suggesting that Kiev was to blame for starting the fighting.
"From the beginning, this whole negotiation seems very much in Russia's favour. And it's even a question of whether it should be described as a negotiation or, in a sense, a series of American surrenders," He said Nigel Gould-Davies, Senior Fellow for Eurasia and Russia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and former British Ambassador to Belarus.
If the parties manage to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian conflict, Rubio said, it could open up "incredible opportunities" to partner with the Russians "on issues that we hope will be good for the world and also improve our relations in the long term".
He didn't say what that would mean.
euronews/ gnews.cz - RoZ
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