Ukraine's debt, Zelenskyy's rating, and the election — Trump

After the meeting of the U.S. and Russian delegations concluded in Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump spoke to journalists, and answered many questions, including his reaction to the talks, the need for elections in Ukraine and Zelenskyy's rating, the issue of financial aid to Ukraine, and even his feedback on his last conversation with Putin.

The recording of the broadcast is available on The White House channel on YouTube.

How Trump assessed the meeting of the U.S. and Russian groups in Saudi Arabia

The American leader said that Russia had performed well in the negotiations. Trump once again reminded us that the war would not have started during his term.

"It looks like Gettysburg, if you see the old pictures of Gettysburg, it's soldiers lying all over the field, body parts all over the field, they're all dead. And this is going on on a daily basis. It's a horrible thing. Both Russia and Ukraine, they're losing thousands and thousands of soldiers. And a lot of people have been killed too," said the U.S. president.

Negotiations could have taken place three years ago

As for negotiating it, Trump said it could have happened three years ago.

"This could have been settled very easily, just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides," Donald Trump stressed.

U.S. peacekeepers in Ukraine

Of course, the briefing covered this hot topic. Trump emphasized that he is not against European countries sending peacekeepers. However, the United States itself will not send troops to Ukraine.

"If they want to do that, that's great. I'm all for it. If they want to do that, I think that'd be fine. I mean, I know France has mentioned it, others have mentioned it. UK has mentioned it. But yeah — well, if we have a peace deal, I think having troops over there from the standpoint of Europe. We won't have to put any over there because we're very far away,"  stated the President of the United States.

Zelenskyy's rating, elections, and "puppet power"

Journalists asked Trump about the elections in Ukraine, and he says that they are indeed urgently needed. According to Trump, this is an objective reality, not something driven by Russia, for example.

"Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine. Well, we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at four percent approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens. You got most of the cities are laying on their sides," claims Trump.

One of the reporters asked Trump a very pointed question: how he plans to act if Russia starts promoting its candidate during the elections to establish a "puppet government" in Ukraine. Surprisingly, this question seemed to catch Trump off guard, and he found nothing better than to repeat his usual mantra that the U.S. would not have allowed this war to happen.

"You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States," said the President of the United States.

On Ukraine's debt to the United States

During the briefing, Trump brought up one of his favorite topics — government spending. In the context of Ukraine, this naturally referred to U.S. financial aid. Trump stated that the funds allocated to Ukraine by Joe Biden’s administration should be returned.

According to Trump, he couldn’t name the exact amount of allocated funds but estimated it to be "around $300-350 billion". The head of the White House claimed that this money would have to be returned or accounted for.

"Where is it going? And I've never seen an accounting of it. I believe President Zelenskyy said last week that he doesn't know where half of the money is that we gave him,"  Trump said.

In addition, he noted that he had "solved the problem with NATO", referring to the fact that European countries began to make significant contributions to the NATO fund after Trump's criticism.

"And the other thing that it's been bothering me for a long time because I solved the problem with NATO. They paid hundreds of billions of dollars into the funds of NATO when I said you got to pay, because the United States was paying for European countries. And then they take advantage of us on trade," said the President of the United States.

On how Putin listens to Trump

Returning to the US-Russia talks, Trump also mentioned his recent conversation with Putin about Ukraine. Trump said that Putin had no chance to invade Ukraine.

"President Putin and I would talk about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. I will tell you that, but there was never a chance of him going in. And I told him, you better not go in. Don't go in, don't go in and he understood that he understood it fully,"  Trump said.

The U.S. president also added that he was only interested in one thing: whether he could "save perhaps millions of lives". Otherwise, Trump said, it could even end in World War III.

As a reminder, the U.S. and Russian delegations met in Saudi Arabia today to discuss the war in Ukraine. The talks lasted 4.5 hours.

The U.S. State Department reported on the agreements reached as a result of the meeting with Russian delegation in Saudi Arabia.