Trump says US to ‘take a pass’ if there’s no Ukraine deal progress: ‘Nobody’s playing me’
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier said that Washington would ‘move on’ if a truce with Russia did not seem ‘doable’ within days
US President Donald Trump said on Friday the United States will “take a pass” on brokering further Ukraine war talks unless there is quick progress from Moscow and Kyiv.
Trump was speaking after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented – following talks with European allies – that Washington would “move on” if a truce did not seem “doable” within days.
“Yeah very shortly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked to confirm what Rubio had said. “No specific number of days, but quickly. We want to get it done.”
Trump refused to cast blame on either Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion of pro-Western Ukraine, or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But he insisted both sides had to make progress.
“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’ – and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump said.
“But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”