US president accuses Ukrainian chief of not wanting to finish the conflict, as Zelenskyy speaks with Washington envoys.
Printed On 19 Oct 2026
United States President Donald Trump has defended sanction waivers for Russia, saying he desires to maintain Moscow on the bargaining desk and accusing his counterpart in Kyiv of not wanting to finish the conflict in Ukraine.
Trump made the feedback on Reality Social on Sunday in response to criticism of his determination to dam quite a few sanctions on Russia simply days earlier than they have been attributable to take impact.
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“My determination on Russia is a quite simple one. I’m within the strategy of negotiating Peace within the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t wish to do something that may drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining desk,” he mentioned.
The transfer has triggered a big diplomatic fallout between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the previous week.
Zelenskyy mentioned that waiving sanctions on Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, “will damage Ukraine”, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that it could strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conflict effort.
“We will’t evaluate me and Putin. He’s [an] aggressor. He occupied us. He killed adults and youngsters, his troopers. He’s a terrorist, and that’s why I hope that President Trump might be very clear with this place.”
Trump reiterated his declare that Zelenskyy doesn’t need the conflict on his nation to finish, saying on Reality Social that Kyiv was launching assaults on diesel refineries in Russia regardless of understanding it was “severely hurting the world diesel markets”.
“Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and albeit, with the entire cash that Europe is famously giving him… he doesn’t wish to finish this conflict, and doubtless by no means did,” Trump wrote.
Trump introduced plans on October 9 for Russia to provide greater than 300,000 metric tonnes of diesel to US and world markets to deal with gas costs which have soared because the US and Israel launched conflict on Iran in late February. The transfer led Tehran to successfully shut the Strait of Hormuz, by which one-fifth of world vitality exports transited earlier than the conflict.
Trump’s embrace of Russian vitality has angered not solely Kyiv, but additionally European companions and lots of US officers, who say the transfer rewards Moscow whereas it continues its four-and-a-half-year conflict towards Ukraine.
US-Ukraine talks proceed
The Ukrainian president mentioned on X on Sunday that he has spoken with US presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as a part of “just about continuous communication” between the 2 international locations’ groups aimed on the “subsequent steps in diplomacy”.
“We’re doing every thing on our half to make this occur, and to make sure that America’s place is powerful and helps convey peace nearer. Peace that everybody, besides Russia, has been ready for over the previous 4 and a half years,” Zelenskyy wrote.
Zelenskyy spoke with Witkoff and Kushner as Russia and Ukraine continued to strike one another’s vitality websites, with Moscow leaving hundreds with out energy, and Kyiv finishing up the biggest drone assault on Russia, in St Petersburg, because the conflict started.
