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Key Points
- The US has threatened to walk away from peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
- Donald Trump has warned the US will “take a pass” on the talks if Russia and Ukraine do not make rapid progress.
- It followed similar comments by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Russia has reportedly retaken more territory from Ukraine as United States President Donald Trump warned that Washington would “take a pass” on peace talks within days unless there is rapid progress from Russia and Ukraine.
Trump’s comments came just hours after US secretary of state Marco Rubio set the clock ticking, saying in Paris that the US could “move on” from its role brokering the negotiations.
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.
“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 told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
“But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
Russia on Saturday said it had retaken the second-last village still under Ukrainian control in its Kursk frontier region, where Kyiv’s forces launched .
The Ukrainian campaign took Russian troops by surprise and resulted in Kyiv seizing more than 1,000 square kilometres of territory.
Russian soldiers recaptured large swathes of the region in March, notably driving the Ukrainians out of the small town of Sudja, their main base of operations in the area.
On Saturday, a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the Kursk region killed a woman and injured a man and a child, Ukrainian officials said.
Trump insists he isn’t being ‘played’
During Friday’s Oval Office press briefing, 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 Zelenskyy, insisting both sides had to make progress.
But Trump warned that a decision on whether to abandon the talks could come “very shortly”.
“No specific number of days, but quickly. We want to get it done,” he added.
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 a question by Agence France-Presse.
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.
During last year’s US election, Trump promised to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, but has little to show for his efforts so far.
His attempts at rapprochement with the Kremlin have alarmed Ukraine and driven a wedge between the US and its European allies.
He and Vance also had a blazing Oval Office row in February with Zelenskyy, whom Trump still accuses of bearing responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine.
Trump insisted that he was not being “played” by Russia, which is accused by Ukraine of dragging its feet.
“My whole life has been one big negotiation, and I know when people are playing us and I know when they’re not,” Trump added.
‘This is how Russia started Good Friday’
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, slammed the latest attacks on his country. Ukraine earlier announced it had received the bodies of 909 soldiers from Russia.
“This is how Russia started Good Friday — with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shahed drones. A mockery of our people and cities,” Zelensky said on Telegram.
Russia said it had hit “key drone production sites” and Ukrainian military airfields.
Putin last month rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a full and unconditional pause in the conflict, while the Kremlin has made a truce in the Black Sea conditional on the West lifting certain sanctions.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed anger and frustration at Zelenskyy in a marked break from his predecessor, Joe Biden.
in Washington that would give the United States sweeping access to its mineral resources.
European powers have meanwhile , particularly as Trump’s administration insists the continent should share the burden for Ukraine’s security.
France hosted meetings between US and European officials in Paris on Thursday, saying the talks had launched a “positive process.”
The meetings included French President Emmanuel Macron, Rubio and US envoy Steve Witkoff.
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