Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have sat down for a face-to-face talk in the opulent halls of a Vatican basilica to discuss a possible ceasefire, after which the US president accused his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, of not wanting to “stop the war”.
The White House described Trump’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader before Pope Francis’s funeral as “very productive”, while Zelenskyy said on X that the talk with the US president was symbolic and had the “potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.
It was the first time that Zelenskyy and Trump had met face to face after a frosty February encounter in the White House where Trump and the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated the Ukrainian leader and accused him of ingratitude for US aid.
I think maybe he meant “nudging me along”? I imagine Putin there at every step, reassuring Trump that he should just wait and see, that he’ll do all work and make Trump look like the big man who negotiated a historic peace deal.
No peace deal means no publicity for the peace deal, so now Trump is getting worried because he tanked the global economy with nothing to show for it.