Trump Warns US May Ditch Ukraine Talks if No Progress

United States President Donald Trump has said Washington could quit talks to end the Ukraine war within days unless there is rapid progress from Moscow and Kyiv.

The warning confirmed a sudden change of US messaging, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier saying in Paris that the United States would “move on” if peace was not “doable.”

Trump has been pressing both sides for a truce, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin despite an ice-breaking call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated negotiations with Moscow.

“Yeah very shortly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked to confirm what Rubio had said about abandoning talks. “No specific number of days, but quickly. We want to get it done,” the AFP quoted him to have said.

Trump refused to cast blame on either Putin, who ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion of pro-Western Ukraine, or Kyiv’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. But he insisted both sides had to make progress.

“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’ — and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump said.

“But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Moscow has kept up strikes on Ukraine, killing at least two people and wounding dozens more in attacks on the northeastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, Ukrainian officials said.

One of the few commitments Trump had wrangled from Russia — a temporary moratorium on striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure — “expired” on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to an AFP question.

After meeting European officials in Paris to discuss a ceasefire, Rubio said Washington needed to figure out soon whether a ceasefire was “doable in the short term.”

“Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” he told reporters.

But speaking on a trip to Italy, US Vice President JD Vance still insisted he was “optimistic” about ending the three-year war.

Trump promised to end the war within 24 hours of taking office but has little to show for his efforts so far.

He has embarked on a rapprochement quest with the Kremlin that has alarmed Kyiv and driven a wedge between the United States and its European allies.

He and Vance also had a blazing Oval Office row in February with Zelensky, whom he still accuses of bearing responsibility for Moscow’s invasion.