(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said that he remains committed to pursuing a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine despite mounting uncertainty over the prospect of face-to-face talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, CBS News reported on Thursday.
“I’ve been watching it, I’ve been seeing it, and I’ve been talking about it with President Putin and President Zelenskiy,” Trump said in a phone interview with CBS News on Wednesday. “Something is going to happen, but they are not ready yet. But something is going to happen. We are going to get it done.”
Trump on Wednesday said he plans to hold talks about the war in Ukraine in coming days after his Alaska summit with Putin in August failed to achieve a breakthrough. A White House official said Trump is expected to speak on the phone on Thursday with Zelenskiy.
Putin also said on Wednesday he is ready to meet with Zelenskiy if the Ukrainian president came to Moscow but that any such meeting had to be well prepared and lead to tangible results. Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed the suggestion of Moscow as a venue for such a meeting.
Trump told CBS News he is unhappy with the carnage between Russia and Ukraine but will keep pushing for a peace agreement.
“I think we’re going to get it all straightened out. Frankly, the Russia one, I thought, would have been on the easier side of the ones I’ve stopped, but it seems to be something that’s a little bit more difficult than some of the others,” he said.
Trump has been frustrated at his inability to get a halt to the fighting, which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after he initially predicted he would be able to end the war swiftly when he took office in January.
(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by Kim Coghill and Lincoln Feast.)
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