The senior officials of the administration of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, pressed on Sunday to Russia and Ukraine to advance a peace agreement after an individual meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Vatican a day before.
“It must happen soon,” said the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio NBC ‘Meet the press’. “We cannot continue spending time and resources to this effort if it will not come to fruition.”
Rubio said that the United States would consider in the next week whether to continue mediating the conversations “or if it is time to focus on other issues.”
Trump and Zelensky, in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis, met in a Vatican Basilica on Saturday to try to revive the hesitant efforts to end the War of Russia with Ukraine.
The meeting was the first between the two leaders from an angry encounter in the Oval office in Washington in February and arrives at a critical moment in the negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.
In a real social post later on Saturday, Trump rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin about recent attacks against Ukraine, saying that “there was no reason for Putin to shoot missiles in civil areas, cities and towns, in recent days.”
In an interview prior to the recording that was issued CBS news The ‘Face the Nation’ program on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said Russia would continue to attack the sites used by the military of Ukraine.
When asked about a Russian strike against kyiv last week that killed civilians, Lavrov said that “the attacked goal was not absolutely civil” and that Russia only points to “sites that are used by the military.”
Zelensky wrote in the Telegram messaging application that his main military commander had reported that Russia had already made almost 70 attacks on Sunday.
“The situation in the front and real activity of the Russian army show that there is currently not enough pressure on the world to put an end to this war, he said.
Different proposals
Ukrainian and European officials retreated last week against some proposals from the United States on how to end the Russian war in Ukraine, making counterprosal on issues, from territory to sanctions, Reuters reported on Friday.
The main areas of difference in the two proposals were about the sequence to solve questions about the territory, the lifting of the sanctions to Russia, the security guarantees and the size of the military of Ukraine.
The US proposals requested American recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea, the Ukrainian Peninsula Moscow seized and attached in 2014, as well as the de facto recognition of the Russian winery in other parts of Ukraine.
In contrast, the European and Ukrainian proposal defends a detailed discussion about the territory until after a stop the fire.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Sunday that Ukraine should not agree with the United States proposal, saying that he went too far in giving stripes of territory in exchange for a high fire.
Despite the divergent opinions, Trump’s national security advisor said Sunday that the meeting with Zelensky showed his determination to reach an agreement.
“That meeting is going to fall into the history books for President Trump, to be president of La Paz,” said National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Fox News’ ‘Futures of Sunday morning’.
Waltz said Trump has “expressed his frustration” to the leaders of both nations, but remained determined to help negotiate an agreement. He also said that the United States and Ukraine would eventually reach an agreement on rare earth minerals and that conversations continued during the weekend.
The Democrats in the United States Congress criticized Trump’s approach to the conflict and the senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Sunday that Trump “gave in to Putin.”
“Simply abandon Ukraine, after all the sacrifice they made, after so much loss of lives, and with the west meeting against Putin, it would be a moral tragedy,” Schumer said about CNN ‘State of the Union’.
Schumer said that Russia’s side in the conflict would tear alliances with Europe and emboldeers dictators worldwide.
