Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Donald Trump has signalled there should be elections in Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia, in his first public remarks after the US held high-level talks with Moscow in Riyadh.
In comments critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyyโs handling of the war, the US president said: โItโs been a long time since weโve had an electionโ in Ukraine. โThatโs not a Russia thing. Thatโs something coming from me and coming from many other countries,โ he told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
โYou have leadership [in Ukraine] now thatโs allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened,โ he added, comparing Ukrainian cities to โdemolition sitesโ.
โThese cities look like Gaza,โ he said, with โmost of the citiesโ.โ.โ.โlaying on their sides. The buildings are collapsed.โ
The president did not mention Russiaโs role in destroying Ukrainian cities and towns during its full-scale invasion โ the largest armed conflict on European soil since the second world war.
Zelenskyyโs term expired last year but Kyiv has said that it can only hold an election after the fighting stops and martial law is lifted.
David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyyโs ruling party in parliament, said this month that elections should not be held earlier than six months after martial law has ended.
Holding elections would be a formidable challenge since millions of Ukrainians are displaced, living abroad or residing in areas under Russian occupation. Kyiv has also expressed security concerns around any polls, saying that western peacekeepers or a security force would be needed to ensure the safety of voters.
A survey of Ukrainians conducted in September and October by the non-profit International Republican Institute found that 60ย per cent of respondents were opposed holding a presidential vote during the war. Some 52ย per cent said they did not support voting for a new parliament while the conflict was ongoing.
There are widespread fears in Kyiv and throughout Europe that Trump wants to settle the war on Russian President Vladimir Putinโs terms. The US already appears to have made significant concessions to Putin by brushing aside Ukraineโs desires to join Nato and restore its control over Russian-occupied land.
Trump said he was โmore confidentโ of reaching a peace deal in Ukraine after the US talks with Russia in Riyadh on Tuesday, which he thought were โvery goodโ.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, Russiaโs foreign minister, led the delegations in a four-and-a-half hour meeting in the Saudi capital.
Afterwards, they agreed to โlay the groundwork for future co-operationโ on ending the Ukraine war and a lightning normalisation of relations, after their first high-level talks on the conflict since Putinโs invasion in February 2022.
Zelenskyy said he had not been informed ahead of time about the talks, and has said Ukraine would reject any settlement that does not directly involve Kyiv. โWe donโt want a peace brokered behind the scenes without our involvement,โ he said. โWithout Ukraine, peace cannot be achievedโ.
The US president also said he was โvery disappointedโ that Ukraine was โupset about not having a seatโ at the Riyadh talks, chastising Kyiv for not ending the war. โWell, theyโve had a seat for three years, a long time before that, this could have been settled very easily,โ Trump said.
He also said he would support European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine after the war, although Lavrov said on Tuesday that any European peacekeeping deployment in the country would be โunacceptableโ.
โIf they want to do that, thatโs great. Iโm all for it if they want to do thatโ and would โnot object to it at allโ, Trump told reporters.
He added that he did not want to pull all US troops out of Europe as part of a peace agreement. โNobodyโs asking to do that, so I donโt think weโd have to do that. I wouldnโt want to do that. But that question has never really come up.โ
As Trump hammered at the leadership of Zelenskyy he claimed that his counterpartโs approval rating stood at 4 per cent.
An opinion poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in December found that 52 per cent of Ukrainians trusted Zelenskyy.
โI like him personally,โ Trump said of Zelenskyy. โHeโs fine. But I donโt care about โpersonallyโ. I care about getting the job done.โ
Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington
