US President Donald Trump told Newsmax he believes Russia wants to end its war with Ukraine, but that Moscow could be “dragging its feet.”
“I think that Russia wants to see an end to it, but it could be they’re dragging their feet. I’ve done it over the years,” the president told the right-wing cable channel in an interview that aired Tuesday night.
“I think Russia would like to see it end and I think Zelensky would like to see it end, at this point,” Trump said.
His comments came only hours after Russia said it would only implement a US-brokered deal to stop using force in the Black Sea once sanctions imposed on its banks and exports over of its invasion of Ukraine are lifted.
Following days of separate negotiations with Ukrainian and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, the White House said the two sides had agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea” while also agreeing to implement a previously announced pause on attacks against energy infrastructure.
While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed in a news conference that Ukraine had agreed to stop using military force in the Black Sea, the Kremlin released its own statement on the talks, which included far-reaching conditions for signing up to the partial truce.
Those included lifting sanctions on its agricultural bank and other financial institutions and companies involved in exporting food and their re-connection to the US-controlled SWIFT international payments system.
On Tuesday afternoon, Trump told reporters that his administration was looking at Russia’s conditions. “We’re thinking about all of them right now. There are five or six conditions. We are looking at all of them,” the president said.
Ukrainian and US officials have said the deal to halt strikes in the Black Sea would be a potentially significant step forward, despite it falling short of the 30-day full ceasefire initially proposed by the White House.