President Trump gave Vladimir Putin a hard deadline to prove he’s serious about ending the Ukraine war — as the Kremlin revealed Thursday the Russian leader has no plans to pow wow with his US counterpart.
“We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not, and if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently, but it will take about a week and a half to two weeks,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday.
Asked whether he believed Putin wanted to end the war, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks.”
Trump — who earlier warned that the Russian prez was “playing with fire” by refusing to engage in ceasefire talks — added that he was “very disappointed” with Moscow’s recent barrage of missile and drone attacks.
“When I see rockets being shot into cities, that’s no good. We aren’t going to allow it,” he said.
Still, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has no plans to speak to Trump — as his forces continued to make gains on the battlefield, including capturing three more villages in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
Trump, for his part, has grown increasingly testy with Putin in recent days.
He spoke with the Russian strongman for two hours last week and thought he’d cinched a deal to begin ceasefire negotiations immediately.
Since then, Moscow launched its worst ever military assault on Ukraine — spurring Trump to declare Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” and that he was “playing with fire” by refusing to engage in peace talks.
Putin claimed last week that he’d agreed to work with Kyiv on a memorandum to establish a peace accord, including the timing of a ceasefire.
Russia says it’s currently drafting its version of the memorandum but can’t predict how long that will take.
Ukraine, meanwhile, hit out over Russia’s delay in sharing the memorandum, saying it suggested it likely contains unrealistic demands.
“The Russians’ fear of sending their ‘memorandum’ to Ukraine suggests that it is likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums, and they are afraid of revealing that they are stalling the peace process,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman, Heorhii Tykhyi, wrote on X on Thursday.
With Post wires
