Washington, Feb 24 US President Donald Trump said it is to Russia’s “benefit” to make a deal and end the war against Ukraine and he thinks President Vladimir Putin does want to make a deal.
Addressing a joint news conference with him, France’s Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of security guarantees in any negotiated agreement to end the war.
The two leaders met at the White House on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Earlier in the day, the United States broke with its European allies to vote against a resolution at the UN General Assembly condemning Russia as the aggressor.
“It's very much to Russia's benefit to make a deal, and I feel that we'll do that,” President Trump said at the joint news conference, responding to a question about whether he trusted President Vladimir Putin. There is tremendous distrust on both sides. “
President Trump said one of the first phone calls he had after starting his second term was to President Putin, who he believed, is ready to make a deal. He repeated that it is to the “ benefit of Russia to make a deal and (for President Putin) to go on with leading Russia in a very positive way”.
The American president also said he is looking forward to signing a deal with Ukraine that will give the US rights to rare earth minerals in return for the billions of dollars in security assistance it has received to defend itself from Russia.
President Macron, who came to Washington DC after two rounds of meetings with European allies who are preparing to deal with a situation in which the US is unlikely to accord them unqualified support in this matter as before, repeatedly stressed the need for “checked and verified” security guarantees in any peace agreement reached with Russia.
“I think it's super important to (bring) peace,” President Macon said in English, which is not his first language. “But my strong point was to say, let's try to get something first, which can be assessed, checked and verified, and let's be sure that we build sufficient guarantees in the short run.”
He said further: “A lot of my European colleagues are ready to be engaged, but we do need American backup, because this is part of the credibility of the security guarantees, and this is our collective deterrence capacity.”
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