US president Donald Trump on Sunday accused Ukraine again of lacking ‘gratitude’ for Washington’s support against Russia’s invasion, as top US and Ukrainian representatives met in Geneva for talks on a proposal to halt the war.
‘UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, while also re-airing frustration at the war’s ‘HUMAN CATASTROPHE’ and attacking his predecessor Joe Biden, but offering no direct condemnation of Moscow.
Trump’s blast at Ukraine and the US allies reflected the Republican’s annoyance over the war, which began when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, seizing and destroying swaths of territory.
Trump claimed in his presidential campaign last year that he would broker a peace within 24 hours.
However, his sporadic diplomatic efforts have made little ground and he faces fierce criticism from within his own party for a new 28-point plan being discussed in Geneva that would deliver several of Russia’s key war aims.
While Trump has previously said he is disappointed in Putin, he rarely criticises the Kremlin leader directly or condemns the invasion, instead pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
In Sunday’s social media post, he criticised European countries that he said continued to buy oil from Russia and called Biden ‘crooked Joe’ for giving Ukraine weapons ‘free, free, free.’
The only mention of Putin in the lengthy post was to claim that the Russian president thought ‘Now is my chance!’ to invade Ukraine only because ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden was in office.
Zelensky has repeatedly expressed thanks for the huge US military support to Ukraine, which continues to battle the occupying Russian forces across a front hundreds of miles long.
Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday said it had captured three more villages in eastern Ukraine as US, Ukrainian and European officials gathered in Geneva to discuss a controversial plan to end the war.
Moscow’s defence ministry said troops had seized Petrivske in the Donetsk region, as well as Tikhe and Otradne in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Kyiv has been scrambling to hold on to key strongholds on the eastern front, where Russian soldiers have been steadily gaining ground.
Russia’s latest advances came ahead of talks in Geneva to discuss US president Donald Trump’s plan to end the nearly four-year war.
Trump has given Ukraine until November 27 to approve the proposal, but Kyiv is seeking changes to a draft that accepts some of Russia’s hard-line demands.
The 28-point plan would require the invaded country to cede territory, cut its army, and pledge never to join NATO.
It also offers Western security guarantees to Kyiv to prevent further Russian attacks.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has welcomed the proposal, saying it could ‘lay the foundation’ for a final peace settlement, but threatened more land seizures if Ukraine walked away from negotiations.
