Washington, May 5 (Sputnik) .- US President Donald Trump said he had “very positive” conversations about the conflict in Ukraine over the weekend.
“We had very positive conversations about Russia and Ukraine over the weekend,” Trump said before the White House press.
At the same time, the American leader said that “there is a lot of hatred between both parties.”
Trump also claimed to ignore whether he will meet with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, during his visit to Saudi Arabia.
The US president will visit Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar from May 13 to 16.
On April 29, the spokeswoman for the State Department, Tammy Bruce, said that the US would withdraw from the negotiation process to solve the Ukrainian crisis as a mediator, if there is no progress towards peace.
In turn, the American vice president, JD Vance, declared that Washington intends to actively seek the start of direct conversations between the parties of the conflict in the next 100 days.
At the end of last January, Putin said in an interview granted to the Russian journalist Pável Zarubin who had expressed his willingness to designate people who will negotiate with Zelenski, if he wanted to participate in the conversations.
According to the president, the negotiations between the two countries will be illegitimate if they are carried out now, because we must find a way to cancel the decree signed by Zelenski in October 2022, which prohibits conversations with Putin.
The Russian President indicated that it is the president of the Supreme Rada (Parliament of Ukraine) that can annul the decree in question, since the presidential mandate of Zelenski expired in May 2024.
In April, at a meeting with the special envoy of the US president, Steve Witkoff, Putin confirmed the provision of the Russian part to negotiate with Ukraine without prior conditions. (Sputnik)