President Donald Trump referred to his previously announced summit between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding peace in Ukraine as a “waste of time,” at a White House Diwali celebration.
Trump told a reporter that his conversation on the phone with Putin last week did not factor into his decision to stop talking about giving Tomahawks to Ukraine, but said that he canceled the meeting because it would have been a “waste of time.”
“Everybody take some time off because you got two countries that are killing each other,” Trump added.
After Trump referred to the Budapest summit as a “waste of time,” a reporter followed up. “Well, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say it would, and you know, you never know what’s going to happen, but a lot of things are happening on that front, on the war front with Ukraine and Russia, and we’ll be notified,” Trump stammered.
He added that its “not our war,” and the U.S. simply sells arms to Ukraine, adding, “NATO and NATO gives it to Ukraine, but we don’t pay anything anymore. Biden spent $350 billion.”
“The war would have never happened if I were president, would have never, not even a million years, and Putin knows that too. It would have never happened. But it did happen and I came in and I, I have to see if I can put it out, but it doesn’t affect us because we’re not losing soldiers there. Although, when I first came in, that could have ended up, it’s not going to happen.”
“But it could have ended up in World War II That was really out of control. So now it’s they’re shooting and they’re killing people and I think Putin wants it to end, and I think Zelensky wants it to end, and I think it’s going to end.”
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The meeting between Trump and Putin was announced last week and was supposed to take place in Budapest, Hungary, in the near future. However, the idea was paused after a call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to the official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The decision to hold off on a meeting between Trump and Putin will likely relieve European leaders, who have accused Putin of stalling for time with diplomacy while trying to gain ground on the battlefield.
The leaders — including the British prime minister, French president and German chancellor — said they opposed any push to make Ukraine surrender land captured by Russian forces in return for peace, as Trump has occasionally suggested.
The Kremlin didn’t seem to be in a rush to get Trump and Putin together again either. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “preparation is needed, serious preparation” before a meeting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been trying to strengthen Ukraine’s position by seeking long-range Tomahawk missiles from the U.S., although Trump has waffled on whether he would provide them.
“We need to end this war, and only pressure will lead to peace,” Zelensky said Tuesday in a Telegram post.
