The incoming U.S. administration could mean a quicker end to the war started by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Amid concerns about what the White House return of Donald Trump means for the war, given the president-elect’s criticism of continued U.S. aid for Kyiv and insistence he can do a deal to end the war, Zelensky said that the new American administration makes it “certain that the war will end sooner.”
“This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” the Ukrainian leader added. Newsweek has emailed the Trump team for comment.
Zelensky told Ukrainian outlet Suspilne that Kyiv must do everything it can to end the war through diplomatic means, although he believed Putin intended to use negotiations to counter the international isolation from the West he has faced.
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“I don’t think Putin wants peace at all,” Zelensky said, according to Ukrainian online newspaper The Kyiv Independent, “but this does not mean that he does not want to sit down with one of the leaders.”
The previous day, Zelensky had criticized a phone call at Berlin’s request between Putin and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which Kyiv believes would play into the Russian president’s hands and risked opening a “Pandora’s box.”
However, Zelensky said that he had a “constructive” conversation with Trump following the American’s election victory and that he “didn’t hear anything that goes against our position.”
Trump’s cabinet nominations for attorney general and director of national intelligence, former representatives Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard respectively, have raised eyebrows in Washington, D.C., and concerns in Kyiv over reports of their opposition to continued American aid for Ukraine.
Trump has nominated for secretary of state, Republican senator Marco Rubio, who has previously said the war had reached a stalemate. Trump’s nomination for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has criticized the amount the U.S. is spending on Ukraine.
However, Zelensky said in his interview that he would only talk directly with Trump and not through his aides and added that, as the Ukrainian leader, he would “only take seriously a conversation with the president of the United States of America.”
Gene Moran, national security expert and a former adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Newsweek that the nominations “certainly have loyalty to President Trump.” He said that, while “in some cases, the credentials are quite identifiable, in others they seem to be absent.”
“It’s hard to know with President Trump’s style, what’s his end game here,” Moran added.