First, on Thursday, NATO chief Mark Rutte said from Berlin that Europe and the world should prepare for the coming war, ominously warning that it could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”
Soon following this, President Donald Trump seemed to echo the warning while voicing frustrations of there being no current off-ramp to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. “Things like this end up in third world wars. And I told that the other day, I said, ‘You know, everybody keeps playing games like this, you’ll end up in a third world war.’ And we don’t want to see that happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
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“I’d like to see the killing stop: 25,000 people died last month, soldiers—mostly soldiers, but some people also where bombs were dropped,” Trump continued.
While acknowledging that the conflict “doesn’t really affect the United States unless it got out of control,” he spoke on the obvious possibility of runaway escalation.
Trump said the United States is “working very hard” to resolve the conflict, but he also broke with Washington’s typical reluctance to finger-point at President Zelensky. But in this instance, he unleashed, saying:
“I thought that we were very close with Russia to having a deal. I thought we were very close with Ukraine to having a deal. In fact, other than President Zelensky, his people loved the concept of the deal.”
The US peace deal hinges on territorial concessions in the Donbas and Crimea, as well as Ukraine limiting the size of its armed forces and agreeing to never join NATO. These are precisely the things that the Zelensky government has long rejected, and Europe has largely supported this unbending stance.
On this point, Trump said: “It’s a little bit complicated because you’re cutting up land in a certain way. It’s not the easiest thing. It’s sort of like a complex real estate deal times a thousand.” Zelensky and the Europeans have been forging a ‘counter-plan’ – but on which Russia has already declared its unwillingness to contemplate.
While Trump clearly named Zelensky as thwarting peace efforts, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to perhaps soften the anti-Kiev remarks. “The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war, and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting,” she told a press briefing.
Zelensky on Wednesday tried to blunt the pressure coming from the Trump White House by declaring he will look into holding elections.
He said: “Since this issue is being raised by the U.S. president and our European partners, I’ll be brief: I am ready. I ask the U.S., together with Europe, to ensure security for the vote. If that is done, Ukraine can hold elections within 60 days.”
However, Zelensky is calling on his international backers to ensure that such an election could be held safely and fairly. Likely, this would mean getting Moscow to agree to a temporary pause in the war, to allow a peaceful vote.