Following a high-stakes summit meeting with European allies at the White House on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made a joke about getting a ticket to heaven by negotiating an elusive peace accord in Ukraine.
Trump said the pearly gates will open for him if he can make a breakthrough to end the war that has lasted three and a half years, a day after the rare summit of leaders claimed some modest progress toward negotiations with Russia.
“I think that’s pretty (good) if I can prevent the deaths of 7,000 people every week,” he told Fox News. If it’s feasible, I’d like to try to reach paradise.
Trump wryly acknowledged that he hasn’t yet met the standards that would be necessary to win over St. Peter.
He said, “I’m hearing that I’m not doing well.” In actuality, I am at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Trump said he still faces a difficult task in trying to get Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet in person, pointing out that both sides must make compromises.
He expressed his hope that President Putin would be good, saying that it would be a difficult situation if he wasn’t. And I’m hoping that President Zelenskyy will fulfill his obligations. He needs to be more adaptable.
In a recurring pattern of stalling, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slammed the prospect of a summit in the near future, stating that it would take a long time to schedule such a sit-down.
Following Trump’s adoption of Kremlin talking lines regarding the dispute, European leaders departed the summit with Trump feeling cautiously optimistic that they had minimized the harm from the U.S. president’s meeting with Putin.
They asserted that they had made great strides toward developing specific Western security assurances for Ukraine that might be incorporated into a future peace deal.
However, they were unable to persuade Trump to return to his earlier position of calling for an immediate ceasefire, which Putin refuses. As a result, it is unlikely that the combat and Russian airstrikes against civilians in Ukraine will stop anytime soon.
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