President Donald Trump accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being too busy celebrating VE Day to deal with the “bloodbath” in Ukraine.
“I’m starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with [Vladimir] Putin, who’s too busy celebrating the Victory of World War II, which could not have been won (not even close!) without the United States of America,” he posted on Truth Social in reference to a Kremlin ceremony marking Victory in Europe Day earlier this week.
“President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH,” Trump said further.
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Trump, who pledged to strike a deal to end the bitter Russia-Ukraine War within just 24 hours of assuming the presidency, has now begun to admit in private his failure to live up to his self-assigned title as “dealmaker-in-chief.”
Though he had at first focused his frustrations on Ukraine–most notably during a tempestuous White House summit with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February—Trump has lately directed an increasing share of his ire toward Moscow.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported the president had told a room full of top GOP donors at Mar-a-Lago that a lack of progress on the peace talks was “keeping him up at night” and that Putin had impeded negotiations with his desire to secure “the whole” of Ukraine.
Trump also reportedly told attendees he’d encountered similar obstacles in clearing the way for an end to hostilities in Gaza, a conflict that began in the late 1940s, because the warring sides had “been fighting for a thousand years.”
His administration would appear to have alleviated some of those frustrations on Saturday, when the White House announced it had managed to broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan following months of rising tensions between the nuclear-armed states and an exchange of airstrikes earlier this week.
It nevertheless proved a short-lived success, with both sides accusing each other of violating the terms of that agreement within a matter of hours after it was reached.
