President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that he will not send American troops to help enforce a potential peace deal in Ukraine, after suggesting on Monday that he was open to the idea. During meetings with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and top European leaders at the White House on Monday, Trump ruled out allowing Ukraine to join NATO, but expressed support for European efforts to police a peace deal in Ukraine.
European countries “want to give protection and they feel very strongly about it and we’ll help them out with that,” Trump stated, pleasing Zelenskyy, who said the U.S. was sending “such (a) strong signal.”
During a phone interview on Fox News this morning, Trump was asked: “What kind of assurances do you feel like you have, going forward, past this Trump administration, that it won’t be American boots on the ground defending (Ukraine’s) border?”
“Well, you have my assurance, and I’m president,” Trump replied.
“I’m just trying to stop people from being killed,” he added. “They’re losing 5,000 to 7,000 people a week in that ridiculous war that should have never happened. If we had a normal president — not even a great president — if we had normal president, it wouldn’t have happened.”
A White House official confirmed to CNN later Tuesday that Trump is “emphatic” about not sending US troops to Ukraine, but noted there are other ways for the US to help protect the country.
The official added that conversations regarding commitments on security guarantees are ongoing, and the specifics of what that will look like will continue to be the subject of negotiations between the US, its European allies and Ukraine. Foreign leaders want to know what resources Trump will commit to ensure that, once a potential peace deal is reached, Russia isn’t able to regroup and go after more territory down the road.
Trump reinvigorated the peace process on Friday with a successful meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
The president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Sunday that Putin was open to accepting “NATO-style protections” for Ukraine, the Associated Press reported.
The extraordinary gathering of allies on Monday was aimed at negotiating an end to the 3 1/2-year-old Russia-Ukraine war.
Ahead of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called Trump “dear Donald” and said ”If we play this well, we could end it.”
Rutte later said it was “a very successful day,” and called Trump a “pragmatic peacemaker” during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News. He said the Europeans did not discuss the potential ceding of Ukrainian territory because that would be up to Zelenskyy and Putin in their negotiations.
The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy went much more smoothly than their testy sit-down in February, which ended with the Ukraine delegation being asked to leave before a scheduled White House luncheon.
This time, Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to the United States and wore a dressier outfit to the White House. He described Monday’s summit as a “significant step toward ending the war.”
After the talks, Trump called and spoke at length to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the next steps in the peace process.
The president on Monday also called for a trilateral meeting involving himself, Zelenskyy, and Putin. On “Fox and Friends” Tuesday, Trump said that he has set up a meeting between just his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts to take place before the trilateral.
They haven’t exactly been best friends,” he said.
“Maybe they’re getting along a little bit better than I thought. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have set up the two meeting,” he said.
The president said the ongoing Ukraine war turned out to be the toughest global conflict to resolve.
“I’ve solved seven wars, we ended seven wars. I thought this would be one of the easier ones, and this has turned out to be the toughest one,” he told the Fox and Friends hosts.
“The thing is a mess,” Trump lamented, adding that it was “started by Joe Biden” and “never should have happened.”