US President Donald Trump has held a press conference following talks between the US and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia, during which he demanded that Ukraine join the peace process.
The Republican said he had “much more confidence” in reaching an agreement to end the war after the meeting in Riyadh, which took place without Ukraine and which he described as “very good”.
In response to a question about the “frustration and sense of betrayal” Ukrainians might feel over their exclusion from the negotiation process, Trump said he himself was frustrated because “Ukraine has had a seat at the table for three years and long before that” and that “even a semi-skilled negotiator could have settled this a long time ago without losing a lot of territory, losing lives and cities”.
The President also effectively made Ukraine’s participation in negotiations on its future conditional on the holding of elections, claiming - without evidence - that Volodymyr Zelenskyy “has the support of only 4% of the population” and accusing the Ukrainian President of “not knowing where half the money the United States has given him is”.
Trump stressed that the demand for elections “is not a Russian desire, it’s my initiative and a number of other countries”.