U.S. President Donald Trump said that the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands, to end a war that has dragged on for nearly four years. Trump has edged back in the direction of pressing Ukraine to give up on retaking land it has lost to Russia, in exchange for an end to the war. Following a phone call last week, the Russian and US leaders Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump announced they would meet in Budapest for talks on resolving the war in Ukraine, triggered by Moscow's all-out offensive in February 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US counterpart Marco Rubio spoke on Monday 20 October to discuss preparations for the summit, and are expected to meet in person to finalise details. However, the Kremlin stated on Tuesday 21 October that there was "no precise time frame" for the summit even though Trump stated that the meeting with Putin could take place within two weeks.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday 19 October. “It’s cut up right now,” adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now.” “They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line, go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Trump’s comments came after Ukrainian drones struck a major gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan, Russian and Kazakh authorities have stated.
Asked in a Fox News interview conducted on 16 October whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would be open to ending the war “without taking significant property from Ukraine,” Trump responded: “Well, he’s going to take something.” “They fought and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property,” Trump said. “We’re the only nation that goes in, wins a war and then leaves.”
The interview was aired Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” but was conducted before Trump spoke to Putin on Thursday and met with Zelensky on Friday. Then on Sunday evening, while flying from Florida to Washington, Trump reiterated his stance that Ukraine will need to give up territory by having the fighting “stop at the lines where they are. “The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that,’” he said. “You know, there are so many different permutations.”
The comments amounted to another shift in position on the war by the U.S. leader. In recent weeks, Trump had shown growing impatience with Putin and expressed greater openness to helping Ukraine win the war.
Contrary to Kyiv’s hopes, Trump did not commit to providing it with Tomahawks following his meeting with Zelenskyy. The missiles would be the longest-range weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal and would allow it to strike targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow, with precision.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement early Sunday that its air defense forces had shot down 45 Ukrainian drones during the night, including 12 over the Samara region, one over the Orenburg region and 11 over the Saratov region neighboring Samara.
Putin has rejected multiple calls for a ceasefire and stuck to a list of hardline demands that Kyiv sees as unacceptable. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is pushing to attend the summit in Budapest, has ruled out territorial concessions. A previous summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska ended early with no breakthrough towards a peace deal.
Ukraine says a meeting between Putin and Zelensky is needed to make progress, but the Kremlin has ruled out talks with the Ukrainian leader until a peace deal is agreed.
