PTI
Davos
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he had a good meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin is that
“war has to end”.
Replying to media queries before leaving Davos, Trump said a US delegation will be meeting Putin today or tomorrow.
“I met President Zelenskyy here; the meeting was good. We (US delegation) are meeting President Putin today or tomorrow,” he said.
Later, Zelenskyy said he has a positive meeting with Trump.
“The meeting was good and it was in favour of our country,” Zelenskyy said here after his special address at the WEF
Annual Meeting.
“As any President, I have to defend the interest of my country and such meetings are generally difficult. But, yes, today it was positive.”
He said the US delegation will also meet an Ukrainian team separately, in addition to their meeting with Putin and later a trilateral meeting is expected in UAE between teams of the US,
Russia and Ukraine.
The trilateral meeting will happen either on
Friday or Saturday.
Asked what would be his message to Putin, Trump said, “The war has to end. A lot of people have
been killed”.
“Last month, around 30,000 people were killed, mostly soldiers. It’s really a war that has to end,”
Trump said.
“We have got to get it done. If we don’t get it done, it will be a disgrace,” Trump said on the need to
end the war.
His special envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to travel to Moscow later today to meet Putin and discuss plans to end the war.
Addressing the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Trump said that he was ‘reasonably close’ to a deal on stopping the Russia-Ukraine war, though he had earlier thought it would be an easier one for him to settle in a matter of hours.
Trump has been trying to get Zelenskyy and Putin to agree to terms to end their nearly four-year-old war.
He had said that Putin and Zelenskyy would be stupid if they don’t end it now, and that he knows they are not stupid.
Trump stressed that he is good at the “stuff (settling wars)” though the United Nations should be doing it.
“It’s got to get done. Saving a lot of lives, saving millions of lives. With Ukraine and Russia, this tremendous hatred between President Zelensky and President Putin. That’s not good. That’s not good for settlements,” he had said.
Trump said, “Many times we had a deal with Russia, and Zelenskyy didn’t agree… It’s a very difficult balance”.
“It’s a blood bath. It’s horrible what’s happening. Drones are killing thousands of people a week. We have to get it stopped”.
Zelenskyy had earlier said his envoys would try to finalise with US officials documents for a proposed peace settlement that relate to postwar security guarantees and economic recovery.
