Washington – A week after the summit of President Donald Trump with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin does not seem hurried to take advantage of the progress that Trump said it was made in his attempt to end the war in Ukraine.
Any impulse of their meeting of almost three hours in Anchorage, Alaska, seems to have slowed, although administration officials say they do not renounce a solution and will continue working to negotiate a elusive peace agreement.
Russia’s main diplomat said in an interview with NBC News on Friday that Putin is prepared to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, although the agenda for a sitting “is not ready at all.”
“President Putin clearly said that he is ready to meet whenever this meeting will really have an agenda, presidential agenda,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to the moderator of “Meet The Press” Kristen Welker in an exclusive interview.
This pronouncement seemed to disagree with Trump’s statement on Monday that he had talked to Putin on the phone and began to organize a meeting between the Russian leader and Zelenskyy. Once that meeting takes place, he said he would sit with both men in search of an agreement.
Speaking to journalists on Friday afternoon at the Oval office, Trump seemed more tentative about the next steps to stop a war that began with Russia’s invasion in 2022 and since then has claimed around 1.5 million casualties on both sides.
“We will see what happens,” said Trump, who also held a photo of himself and Putin that the Russian leader had sent him after the summit. “I think in the next two weeks, we will discover how it will go. And it will be better to be very happy.”
In that period of two weeks, he said: “I will make a decision about what we do, and it will be, it will be a very important decision, and that is whether or not they are massive sanctions or massive rates, or both. Or we do nothing and we say, ‘it is your fight’.”
(“Two weeks” is a deadline that Trump often invokes when it comes to any number of policy objectives, dating from his first mandate).
Stoping a rooted conflict in old complaints about earth and national identity is not a small task. The point of the dead between the combatants focuses on security guarantees for Ukraine, together with the fate of the Ukrainian territory that Russia has tried to take advantage of by force.
More delays could work for Putin’s advantage, allowing their troops to cement the profits obtained on the battlefield.
A western official said that Lavrov’s comments have frustrated the White House, since they suggest that Russia can be retreating the commitments Trump believes that he extracted from Putin.
“The Russians are paddling back day by day,” said the official. “So you see and feel as if they are playing, which is frustrating for any president, but particularly for someone from the nature of President Trump.”
Even so, Trump administration officials said they are not renouncing the perspective of a peace agreement.
“No one is ready to throw in the towel,” said a national security officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. “One of the things in which the president has been very clear is that if there is a path to end this diplomatically in the short term, then he wants to take it. There is no military solution to the conflict. The question is whether it has a diplomatic solution now or if it takes the next six or 12 or 18 months reach that point of view.”
Trump increased the hopes that great advance could be in sight with his face -to -face meeting with Putin, followed by his sitting three days later at the White House with Zelenskyy and European leaders.
After that round of diplomacy through the country, the road to a truce remains as cloudy as ever. In a social networks publication on Thursday, Trump wrote that because Ukraine largely defends his grass, he cannot defeat Russia. A White House official, speaking under anonymity, said the position was destined to point out that Ukraine will need to accept an agreement largely in the terms of Russia.
The negotiations are developed in the context of the public bet of the White House to land the Nobel Peace Prize. An unpopular figure in Europe, Trump would face difficult probabilities even if the end of the war that is fair for Ukraine.
Christian Tybring-Gjedde is a member of the Norwegian Parliament who nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize in his first mandate.
“If you want to have the attention of the Nobel Committee, you have to create a peace based on the needs of Ukraine,” said Tybring-Gjedde in an interview on Friday. “Ukraine has been invaded. He has been violated. They are now fighting for survival as a nation.”
“You have to understand who the aggressor is,” he added.
After raising bets, Trump administration officials and external allies are now presenting a message that the conflict may not be so important for everyday Americans after all.
Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio who has presented a resolution of the Senate that asks Trump to win the Nobel Prize, said on a forum on Wednesday in Cleveland: “Look, the war is not the war of the United States. If the war continues, if the war ends, it does not change the lives of the Americans.”
In an appearance on Sunday in “Meet The Press”, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “if tomorrow the war continues, life in the United States will not be altered fundamentally.”
Trump seemed a more serious note during a tense meeting with Zelenskyy in the Oval office in February, warning that the conflict could spiral in World War II if an end is ended.
A White House official told NBC News this week: “President Trump and his national security team continue to related to Russian and Ukrainian officials for a bilateral meeting to stop the murder and end the war. As many world leaders have declared, this war would never have happened if President Trump were in office. It is not of national interest to negotiate these problems.
For its part, Rubio is coordinating an effort among Americans to protect Ukraine from future Russian attacks once the war ends. A safety guarantee is crucial for Zelenskyy, who has said that he wants a specific plan in just over a week.
Rubio directed a discussion on Thursday with the national security advisors of Great Britain, Finland, Germany, France and Italy, as well as the diplomats of the European Union and NATO, confirmed a US official.
A source familiar with the meeting said that progress continues, adding that the Ukrainian security plan must be in place ahead of any potential summit among Ukrainian and Russian leaders.
When it comes to a security guarantee for Ukraine, there is a divergence between what Russia wants and what the West is willing to accept.
Lavrov said earlier this week that Russia categorically rejects “any scenario that imagines the appearance of military contingents of NATO countries in Ukraine, that it would be full of an uncontrollable escalation of the conflict and unpredictable consequences.”
However, the European Union ambassador to the United States, Jovita Neliupšienė, told journalists on Friday: “Russia cannot have the veto for EU or NATO membership, and decisions about territories are solidly decisions of Ukraine and international borders should not be changed by force.”
If negotiations are fueled, that could cause a movement in Congress to slapped secondary sanctions to countries that buy Russian energy or do business with the Putin regime.
Last month, in a little bipartisanship, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal de Connecticut introduced a resolution that would punish countries “that continue to finance the barbaric war of Putin in Ukraine.”
Blumenthal, in an interview, said the West is losing patience. The Trump Summit meeting with Putin could not produce the fire, a result that serves the interests of Putin, he said.
“It’s as simple as the day Vladimir Putin wants a continuous war because he thinks he is winning,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “The longer it arrives, the better it is for him. His strategy has been clear since the beginning of this war: lasting more than the people of Ukraine and their supporters, sacrificing any Russian blood that is necessary and conquering Ukraine. And if there is a pause, be ready to invade again.”
