WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine as part of a potential peace deal to end the three-year-old war.
“Yeah, he will accept that. I’ve asked him that question,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office while hosting French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Look, if we do this deal, he’s not looking for more war. He doesn’t mind,” Trump added.
“But I’ve specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it.”
It’s unclear whether the European troops would be stationed inside currently Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine or within Kyiv-held territory to deter further airstrikes.
Macron said through a translator that a potential deployment of troops from his own nation to Ukraine would “be there to maintain peace, they would not be along the front lines, they would not be part of any conflict. They would be there to ensure that the peace is respected.”
Monday marked the first of two closely-watched meetings between Trump and European leaders this week, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who has also backed peacekeepers in the war-torn nation — due to visit Thursday.
Trump also said Monday that he was open to visiting Putin in Moscow after fighting ends — though he added that May 9 commemorations of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II would be too soon.
“If this all gets settled out, which I think it will, sure I would go and he’d come here too,” Trump said.
The American president spoke shortly after the US joined Russia in voting against a pro-Ukraine measure at the United Nations calling for a “just, comprehensive and lasting peace.”
“I would rather not explain it now, but it’s sort of self-evident,” he told reporters of the vote, in which the US joined the likes of Russia, Belarus, Haiti, Hungary, Israel, Nicaragua and North Korea in opposing the resolution.
Trump also said that he believes the US and Russia could bolster economic cooperation as part of the Ukraine peace process — after stiff American sanctions during the three-year war.
“We’re trying to do some economic development deals [with Russia]. They have a lot of things that we want, and we’ll see. I mean, I don’t know if that will come to fruition, but we’d love to be able to do that, if we could,” he said.
“You know, they have massive rare earth. It’s a very large — it’s actually the largest in terms of land. It’s by far the largest country. And they have very valuable things that we could use, and we have things that they could use, and it would be very good if we could do that. I think it would be a very good thing for world peace and lasting peace.”
Trump added that “the first element of the overall transaction is ending the war. But if, just as we’re doing with Ukraine, if we could do could do some economic development in terms of Russia and getting things that we want something like that would be possible, yes.”
