U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, saying he was “disappointed” that the Ukrainian president complained about being frozen out of U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the war.
"Today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years," Trump said, referring to Ukraine. "You should have never started it. You could have made a deal."
Trump did not clarify what he meant, but he has often blamed the war on Ukraine's desire to join NATO. Experts say Russia's full-scale invasion was driven by Russian President Vladimir Putin's imperial ambitions rather than Ukraine's NATO ambition, which had little support from the West at the time.
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on February 18, Trump also said he now feels "much more confident" of reaching a deal to end the conflict in Ukraine.
"I think I have the power to end this war,” he said at a news conference after the high-level talks in Riyadh attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
SEE ALSO: What We Learned From High-Stakes U.S.-Russia Talks In Saudi ArabiaTrump also said he might meet Putin this month and that he would not oppose a European move to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, an idea discussed during a European summit in Paris on February 17.
“If they want to do that I’m all for it,” said Trump, before adding that the United States has no plans to contribute troops to any contingent sent to Ukraine to provide security guarantees.
SEE ALSO: How Realistic Is A European Peace-Keeping Force In Ukraine?Trump also said that Ukraine should hold elections, saying: "That's not a Russia thing, that's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also."
Other U.S. officials have suggested that Ukraine could hold elections following a cease-fire deal and this would be “good for democracy."
But Ukraine’s constitution bars it from holding elections under martial law, which was imposed when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and continues to this day after repeated extensions.
SEE ALSO: Ukraine Preparing For Elections, Claims Zelenskyy's Predecessor PoroshenkoUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's five-year term was due to end in May 2024 after elections in March, and Putin has said he would not negotiate with Zelenskyy because he would not have the authority to sign a peace deal.
Earlier on February 18, after the talks in Riyadh, the first senior-level Washington-Moscow discussions since the 2022 invasion, Russia and the United States agreed to establish teams to negotiate a path to ending the war “as soon as possible,” Rubio said
Key Takeaways From Saudi Meeting
By Mike Eckel, RFE/RL senior international correspondent
(Diplomatic) Boots On The Ground. The two sides agreed to re-staff their diplomatic posts in Washington and Moscow. It's a diplomatic spat that predates the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, stretching into the first Trump administration (dozens expelled on both sides), and even the Obama administration, which also shuttered two diplomatic compounds in the States. Putting more diplomats on the ground is, by all accounts, fairly noncontroversial. For its part, the Kremlin signaled prior to Riyadh it wants those compounds back.
Give Peace A Chance. The delegations agreed to create a high-level team to focus specifically on the Ukraine conflict. But the devil is in the details: Is NATO membership off the table? European peacekeepers? More weapons for Kyiv? Fewer sanctions for Moscow? We won't get any hints of what's on the table for weeks. Something else to watch: a side comment made earlier by Putin in the Kremlin readout of his call with Trump, which referenced "root causes" of the Ukraine war. If it pops up again, it may augur bad news for Ukrainian independence or autonomy.
'Closer Relations And Economic Cooperation.' That can mean pretty much anything, but one bit of low-hanging fruit for closer relations is space cooperation. Russia and the United States for years largely succeeded in shielding their joint space work from politics. That's atrophied in recent years. Signing a new agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, would be an easy, noncontroversial move.
The U.S. secretary of state also said the European Union “is going to have to be at the table at some point” because of the sanctions the bloc has imposed.
Sanctions were imposed as a result of the conflict, he said, speaking in an interview with the Associated Press and CNN. “In order to bring an end to any conflict there has to be concessions made by all sides.”
Rubio noted the need for improvements in how the U.S. and Russian embassies "are able to work" in order to create missions to support peace talks, bilateral relations, and cooperation more broadly.
“If our diplomatic channels are broken, it’s going to be very difficult to consistently engage on a host of topics, including some unrelated irritants that could derail the broader talks on Ukraine,” Rubio said.
He called for quick action on restoring "normalcy" at the embassies, adding that it would be “important to set the table for the other two things that we want to do.”
Some European leaders, alarmed by the radical shift in U.S. policy toward relations with Russia, fear Washington will make serious concessions and rewrite the continent's security arrangement.
U.S. national-security adviser Michael Waltz said any postwar peace guarantee would have to be "European-led," echoing calls by U.S. officials for European allies to increase defense spending and praising Britain and France for "talking about contributing more forcefully to Ukraine's security."
During the February 17 summit in Paris, European leaders expressed a willingness to offer security guarantees to Ukraine, but they warned that the level of such assurances would have to be based on Washington's participation in the event of a comprehensive peace agreement, something the U.S. president now seems to have poured cold water on.
France is to host a second meeting on February 19 to discuss the war in Ukraine and European security. This time, Canada and other European countries not present at the earlier emergency summit will attend.