Trump also revealed he had invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House to sign an agreement expected to allow the US to profit from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, and oil and gas, in return for past and ongoing defence support.
The deal to “get our money back” was close, Trump said, an assessment also made by Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna in a post on X.
“I will be meeting with President Zelensky,” Trump said. “In fact, he may come in this week or next week to sign the agreement, which would be nice. I’d love to meet him, we’d meet at the Oval Office.
“He would like to come, as I understand it, here to sign it, and that would be great with me. I think they’d then have to get it approved by their council or whoever might approve it, but I’m sure that will happen.”
Trump’s invitation to Zelensky comes less than a week after he branded the Ukrainian wartime leader a “dictator without elections” and a “modestly successful comedian” who had done a terrible job as president, echoing Kremlin propaganda points.
Zelensky declared martial law after Putin’s invasion, suspending elections. He has promised to hold elections once the war ends, but at the weekend said he was prepared to step down immediately in return for Ukrainian membership of the NATO security alliance.
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In opposing the pro-Ukraine motion at the United Nations, the US ultimately sided with Russia and 16 other nations including Belarus, North Korea and Sudan. However, 65 countries abstained, marking a downturn in explicit support for Ukraine compared to previous votes when more than 140 nations condemned Russia and called for its withdrawal.
The US also ended up abstaining from its own motion urging an end to the war – without mentioning Russia’s aggression – after European nations successfully amended it to note “the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation”.
In her remarks, US deputy ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea acknowledged Russia’s “blatant violations of the UN charter”, noting they had been condemned repeatedly in UN motions since the start of the war in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea.
“Those resolutions have failed to stop the war. It has now dragged on for far too long, and at far too terrible a cost to the people in Ukraine, in Russia, and beyond,” Shea said.
“These amendments pursue a war of words, rather than an end to the war. The attempt to add this language detracts from what we are trying to achieve with this forward-looking resolution.”
with AP
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