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U.S. President Donald Trump said Russia has the upper hand in peace talks over Ukraine as the Kremlin occupies a significant chunk of Kyiv’s territory.
“I think the Russians want to see the war end, I really do. But I think they have the cards a little bit, because they’ve taken a lot of territory. So they have the cards,” Trump told the BBC on Air Force One.
The U.S. president was flying back to Washington from a meeting in Florida on Wednesday evening, after falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, attacking its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and arguing that Kyiv should hold new elections.
The new Trump administration, however, has appeared to give up much of its negotiating leverage over Russia unilaterally. Speaking at NATO headquarters on Feb. 12, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. would not accept NATO membership for Ukraine or provide peacekeeping troops, and warned the country would not return to its pre-2014 borders when Moscow launched its initial attack.
On Wednesday, European officials distanced themselves from Trump’s statements, with German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius saying that “the Americans made a mistake” and Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard insisting that Europe must not fall into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trap.
Trump’s attack against Zelenskyy come after U.S. and Russian officials met for talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, marking the first high-level negotiations between the two sides since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Ukraine was not invited to participate in the talks.
Both Washington and Moscow announced that a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin could take place before the end of February.
