By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that a resolution to the more than four-year-old war in Ukraine is “getting closer than people realize” and that he will talk about Ukraine during talks in Turkey this week at a NATO summit.
Trump made his remarks after speaking at the weekend with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He gave no specific reason for his assertion that a solution to the conflict was in sight, and overnight Russia hammered Kyiv and the surrounding region with missiles and drones, killing at least 28 people.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he believed the U.S. position on how to resolve the conflict remained unchanged.
But Zelenskiy, interviewed by the Financial Times, said he believed the U.S. president was viewing the conflict in a new light in view of recent Ukrainian successes.
“This is one that I think we’re getting much closer than people realize. And President Putin wants it to end. I will tell you that very strongly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump said he had held a “good call” with Putin on the Fourth of July holiday, a conversation a Kremlin aide said lasted 85 minutes and was marked by the U.S. president offering to help find a way to move towards peace.
“And President Zelenskiy actually wants it to end now. And we’re going to be going to NATO, and we’re going to be talking about it, and I think we’re going to get it,” he said. “I think we’re going to get it ended. It’s been a terrible situation.”
Trump is scheduled to meet Zelenskiy on Wednesday on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara and a U.S. official said the idea of the talks was to make a renewed push to end the war.
The same official said Trump would likely follow up with Putin after talking to Zelenskiy.
KREMLIN SEES CONSISTENT U.S. LINE ON UKRAINE
In Moscow, Peskov said Putin and Trump had agreed to continue contacts “in the near future” and that Moscow believed the U.S. president held a consistent position on the conflict.
“You know, President Trump, the U.S. president, has a fairly consistent stance, and all these fabrications about him supposedly changing his views like a weather vane are, of course, untrue,” Peskov told reporters.
“He is consistent and confident in his understanding of what is happening, but, most importantly, he (Trump) is open to listening to the information that is conveyed to him by Putin.”
Zelenskiy also described his weekend phone conversation with Trump as “very good”. In his comments to the Financial Times, he said the U.S. president had told him that Ukraine “is doing very well” with its long-range drone campaign on Russian oil industry targets that has triggered fuel shortages inside the country.
Asked whether that was enough to bring Trump firmly on to Ukraine’s side, Zelenskiy said he felt the American leader was viewing the conflict in a new light.
“President Trump wants to be where there’s success,” the newspaper quoted Zelenskiy as saying.
“That’s tied to many things – not only to his personality, but to the approaching (U.S. midterm) elections, to his status, to his belief in how this war can be ended.”
Since an Oval Office encounter between Trump and Zelenskiy last year degenerated into a shouting match, the Ukrainian president has worked to improve their relations at a series of meetings.
Trump’s latest comments made no reference to his earlier call for the Ukrainian leader to move quickly in agreeing to a deal with Russia because he lacked “the cards” for negotiations.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Steve Holland and by Dmitry Antonov in Moscow; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Ron Popeski and Lincoln Feast.)
