NewsPolitics

Trump says Putin is ‘destroying Russia’ and should make deal to end war in Ukraine

US President Donald Trump signs numerous executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, 20 January 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE / JIM LO SCALZO / POOL

US President Donald Trump signs numerous executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, 20 January 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE / JIM LO SCALZO / POOL

As he signed dozens of executive orders in the Oval Office following his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, Donald Trump told reporters that he thought Vladimir Putin “was destroying Russia” by pursuing the war rather than making a peace deal with Ukraine.

Reiterating his intention to meet with Putin face to face in the near future, Trump said: “Zelensky wants to make a deal. I don’t know if Putin does. But he should,” before adding that Russia was “in big trouble” due to the drain placed on its economy by the ongoing war.

Trump’s comments came after he delivered an inauguration speech which, while not mentioning either Russia or Ukraine by name, was unequivocal in its nativist, America-first tone and clearly designed to leave the world in no doubt that his second term in office would be very different to his first.

While the Kremlin has not addressed Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told state-owned news agency TASS on Tuesday that there had so far been “no preparations” for a Putin–Trump call, despite Moscow repeatedly making it clear that it was open to dialogue with the new administration.

In the hours before the inauguration on Monday, Putin congratulated Trump on his return to office during a meeting of the Russian Security Council in Moscow, the first time he has ever issued public congratulations to an incoming US president since coming to power 25 years ago.

In his comments Putin also signalled Moscow’s readiness to address “the root causes of the crisis” in Ukraine and to seek “long-term peace” in the region, expressing his hope that dialogue with Washington would be carried out “based on equality and mutual respect”.

When asked by a reporter about his campaign-trail claim to be able to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office on Monday, Trump shot back: “I have another half a day left, we’ll see.”

The Trump administration’s far-right political agenda did however enjoy a cautiously warm welcome from officials in Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova praising an executive order issued by Trump ending the federal government’s diversity programmes on Tuesday.

“Can you imagine how many lives have been ruined over the years by the propaganda of this nonsense?” Zakharova asked, adding that the US had for years promoted what she described as “the ideology of amputating healthy genitals and replacing them with artificial ones”, in an apparent reference to rights for transgender people.

Putin was seen cheerfully waving to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday morning in a video shared by the Kremlin as the two allies held talks via video link, during which they stressed the “self-sufficiency” of Sino-Russian relations and the fact that the close ties between Moscow and Beijing did not depend on “global conjuncture”.

pdfshareprint
Editor in chief — Kirill Martynov. Terms of use. Privacy policy.