Trump: Ukraine doesn’t have any cards, but they’re playing tough
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and then-US President Joe Biden should have taken steps to avert the invasion, and that Kyiv would soon sign a minerals agreement with the United States as part of efforts to end the conflict.
“Russia attacked, but they shouldn’t have let him attack,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Radio.
Trump denounced Zelenskiy as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned he had to move quickly to secure peace with Russia, or risk losing his country.
In return, Zelenskiy said Trump was trapped in a “disinformation bubble,” but later toned down his statements and said he was hoping for American pragmatism.
Speaking at a White House event earlier on Friday, Trump was critical of Zelenskiy while emphasising that he had “very good talks with Putin.”
“I’ve had not such good talks with Ukraine,” Trump said. “They don’t have any cards, but they’re playing tough.”
Later, Trump predicted a minerals agreement would be reached soon.
“We’re signing an agreement, hopefully in the next fairly short period of time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about a possible deal for Ukraine’s minerals.
Zelenskiy said separately on Friday that Ukrainian and US teams were working on a draft agreement. “I am hoping for … a fair result,” he said in a video address following this week’s sharp exchanges between the two leaders.
Previously, Zelenskiy rejected US demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the United States had supplied nowhere near that sum so far and offered no specific security guarantees in the agreement.
It is noteworthy that Ukraine has valuable deposits of strategic minerals that the US wants. These include uranium, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and more, and are used in applications such as batteries, technology, and aerospace.
