Ukraine’s exclusion from recent US-Russia peace negotiations in Saudi Arabia has sparked diplomatic tensions, with former US President Donald Trump blaming Kyiv for failing to prevent the war.
Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump expressed his disappointment at Ukraine’s reaction to being left out of the talks, asserting that the conflict “could have been settled very easily” had the country reached an agreement with Russia, reports the BBC.
His remarks come after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov categorically rejected any NATO-led peacekeeping presence in Ukraine as part of a future settlement.
The discussions in Riyadh, involving US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior Russian officials, marked the first known direct engagement between the two nations since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began three years ago.
During the press conference, Trump maintained that Ukraine could have avoided war.
“I hear they’re upset about not having a seat, but they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that,” he said. “This could have been settled very easily. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
The former president went further, suggesting he could have personally brokered an agreement that would have spared lives and infrastructure. “I could have made a deal for Ukraine,” he claimed.
“That would have given them almost all of the land—everything, almost all of the land—and no people would have been killed, no city would have been demolished.”
Following the talks in Riyadh, Trump expressed optimism, saying he was “much more confident” about the prospect of ending the war.
“They were very good. Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism,” he stated, adding, “I think I have the power to end this war.”
Asked about the potential deployment of European troops to Ukraine, Trump responded, “If they want to do that, that’s great. I’m all for it.”
The high-level meeting in Saudi Arabia, attended by US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, alongside Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev, resulted in an agreement to appoint teams to initiate negotiations to end the war.
Lavrov reiterated Russia’s firm stance against NATO troops operating under any guise within Ukraine, warning, “Any appearance by armed forces under some other flag does not change anything. It is, of course, completely unacceptable.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared cautiously optimistic, stating that Russia seemed “willing to begin to engage in a serious process” to end the conflict.
However, he stressed that “there have to be concessions made by all sides,” declining to specify what those might entail. “Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey, but an important one,” he remarked.
The apparent thawing of US-Russia relations prompted a hastily arranged European leaders’ meeting in Paris to discuss their response, but no unified stance was reached.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer stressed that any future Ukraine deal must include a “US backstop” to deter future Russian aggression and suggested he would consider deploying British troops. However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed discussions on troop deployment as “completely premature.” Similarly, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk ruled out sending forces, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration, cast doubts on the idea, calling it “the most complex and least effective” approach to securing peace in Ukraine.
Rubio acknowledged that the European Union would inevitably need to be involved in the diplomatic process, particularly due to its role in sanctioning Russia. On Ukraine’s exclusion from the talks, he maintained that “no-one is being sidelined” and that “everyone involved in that conflict has to be OK with it.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking at a press conference in Turkey, appeared visibly frustrated. “We want everything to be fair and so that nobody decides anything behind our back,” he said. “You cannot make decisions without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine.”
Zelensky is likely to be alarmed by the apparent cordiality between American and Russian representatives in Riyadh, yet he may find himself with limited options. Without continued American support, Ukraine’s ability to resist—let alone defeat—Russian forces remains precarious.
