US president-elect Donald Trump in Paris, 7 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / SARAH MEYSSONNIER
US president-elect Donald Trump told journalists on Tuesday that he understood Russia’s stance on Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership and said that he hoped to hold talks with Vladimir Putin within six months of taking office on 20 January.
Speaking during a press conference held at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump blamed outgoing US President Joe Biden for provoking Russia into invading Ukraine by supporting Kyiv’s aspirations to join NATO, noting that “Russia, for many, many years, long before Putin, said you could never have NATO involved with Ukraine”.
As a result, Trump said, Russia had a prospective NATO member state “right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feeling about that”, apparently unaware that Russia already borders six NATO members.
When asked how he planned to end the war, Trump said that while Vladimir Putin would “like to meet” him sooner rather than later, it would have been inappropriate to do so before his inauguration on 20 January, adding that he hoped he’d meet Putin “long before six months”.
“Russia’s losing a lot of young people and so is Ukraine, and it should have never been started. That’s a war that should have never happened. I guarantee you, if I were president, that war would’ve never happened”, Trump continued.
Ending the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible is a priority for the Trump administration, after Trump repeatedly claimed that he could end the conflict within 24 hours while on the campaign trail last year.
Last month, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris to discuss ending the war, with most analysts believing that Trump favours a peace deal in which Ukraine agrees to cede the territory currently occupied by Russian forces to Moscow, or approximately 20% of sovereign Ukrainian territory.
On Monday, Politico reported that Laura Cooper, a senior Pentagon official who played a key role in coordinating US military aid to Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, had resigned amid “uncertainty over Ukraine policy” under the incoming Trump administration.
