The U.S. president stated that both countries could make “great deals” with Washington if a truce is signed after more than three years of war.
Donald Trump said on Sunday that he expects a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine “this week,” and anticipated “great deals with the United States” for both parties if a truce is reached in the conflict that began in 2022.
“Russia and Ukraine are expected to reach an agreement this week,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, without offering further details on any progress in peace negotiations that Washington has sought to promote since he took office in late January, replacing Democrat Joe Biden.
“Both will then start doing great deals with the United States of America, which is thriving, and they will make a fortune!” he added.
The American president’s remarks come after he warned on Friday that the U.S. would “step aside” from mediating an end to the conflict if no progress was made by Kyiv and Moscow.
In line with this, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Washington would withdraw from its mediation efforts if peace between Moscow and Kyiv proved “unfeasible.”
While insisting that both sides must move toward an agreement, Trump said: “If for some reason one of the two sides makes it too difficult, we’ll simply say: ‘They’re fools. They’re terrible people,’ and we’ll just walk away.” He added, “I hope we don’t have to do that.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported on Sunday that Russia had violated more than two thousand times the 30-hour truce declared by Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday evening.
“In practice, in all major areas of the front, Russia has failed to honor its truce promise,” Zelensky wrote. He also criticized Moscow for not responding to Ukraine’s proposal to extend the Easter ceasefire to 30 days.
Zelensky made these remarks shortly after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s TASS news agency that Moscow had no plans to extend the truce.
“Ukraine proposes a cessation of all long-range drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension,” the Ukrainian president wrote. He added that if Russia refuses to extend the air truce, it will once again show that its goal is “to prolong the war.”
After Putin unilaterally declared a full ceasefire on Saturday to mark Easter, Zelensky instructed his military to stop firing wherever Russian forces had also ceased fire.
The Ukrainian president also reiterated his proposal to extend the truce to thirty days, a measure the Kremlin had already rejected over a month ago when Trump presented it to Putin.
“Either Putin does not control his army, or the situation shows that Russia is not aiming for genuine progress toward ending the war,” Zelensky said.
Putin and other senior Russian officials have made clear that they do not consider a lasting ceasefire feasible at this time, arguing that Kyiv would use the pause to regroup and rearm with Western weapons.
Analysts believe the Easter truce was, in reality, a diplomatic move to gain favor with President Trump.
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