Kyiv: Russian officials and state media took a triumphant tone Thursday after US President Donald Trump jettisoned three years of US policy and announced he would likely meet soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal in the almost three-year war in Ukraine.
Trump’s change of tack seemed to identify Putin as the only player that matters in ending the fighting and looked set to sideline Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, as well as European governments, in any peace negotiations.
The Ukrainian leader recently described that prospect as “very dangerous.”
Putin has been ostracised by the West since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbour, and in 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader for war crimes.
Here’s a look at some reactions to Wednesday’s events.
“To us, the position of the current (US) administration is much more appealing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
Russian officials and state-backed media appeared triumphant after Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin that lasted more than an hour.
“The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself,” the deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in an online statement.
Senior lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said that the call “will go down in the history of world politics and diplomacy.”
“I am sure that in Kyiv, Brussels, Paris and London they are now reading Trump’s lengthy statement on his conversation with Putin with horror and cannot believe their eyes,” Pushkov wrote on his messaging app.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti said in an opinion column: “The US finally hurt Zelenskyy for real,” adding that Trump had found “common ground” with Putin.
“This means that the formula nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ — a sacred cow for Zelenskyy, the European Union and the previous US administration — no longer exists. Moreover, the opinion of Kyiv and Brussels (the European Union) is of no interest to Trump at all,” it added.
Russian popular pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda went even further and published a column stating in the headline that “Trump signed Zelenskyy’s death sentence.”
“The myth of Russia as a pariah’ in global politics, carefully inflated by Western propaganda, has burst with a bang,” the column said.
Trump appears minded to make a deal over the heads of Ukraine and European governments.
He also effectively dashed Ukraine’s hopes of becoming part of NATO, which the alliance said less than a year ago was an “irreversible” step, or getting back the parts of its territory, estimated at close to 20 per cent of the country, captured so far by the Russian army.
The US administration’s approach to a potential settlement is notably close to Moscow’s vision of how the war should end. That has caused alarm and tension within the 32-nation NATO alliance and 27-nation European Union.
Some European governments who fear their countries could also be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs were alarmed by Washington’s new course, saying they must have a seat at the negotiating table.
“Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on social media Wednesday.
Others balked at Trump’s overtures and poured cold water on his upbeat outlook.
“Just as Putin has no intention of stopping hostilities even during potential talks, we must maintain Western unity and increase support … to Ukraine, and political and economic pressure on Russia,” Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said. “Our actions must show that we are not changing course.”
A soldier from Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade fighting in the eastern Donetsk region said it was normal for Trump and Putin to speak to each other.
“If dialogue is one way to influence the situation, then let them talk — but let it be meaningful enough for us to feel the results of those talks,” the soldier said, insisting on anonymity due to security risks for her family in occupied Ukrainian territory.
But she was sceptical about the negotiations, given the incompatible demands tabled in the past by Russia and Ukraine.
“The conditions are unacceptable for everyone. What we propose doesn’t work for them, and what they propose is unacceptable for us,” she said. “That’s why I, like probably every soldier here, believe this can only be resolved by force.”
