Ukraine-Russia latest: Trump says US will attend Ukraine peace talks with Europe but doesn’t want to ‘waste time’
The US will send a representative to participate in talks in Europe on Ukraine this weekend, Donald Trump has said, while warning that he doesn’t want to waste “a lot of time”.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said: “We’ll be attending the meeting on Saturday in Europe if we think there’s a good chance. And we don’t want to waste a lot of time if we think it’s negative.”
Trump has grown weary of multiple meetings and “extremely frustrated with both sides of this war”, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky raised serious concerns about the US’s proposal to designate the contested Donbas region as a “free economic zone”.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky questioned how such an arrangement would function.
“If one side’s troops have to retreat and the other side stays where they are, then what will hold back these other troops, the Russians? Or what will stop them disguising themselves as civilians and taking over this free economic zone? This is all very serious.”
