US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it \u201cmore difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine\u201d than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.<\/p>\n
The US is \u201cdoing very well with Russia\u201d, and \u201cit may be easier dealing with\u201d Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.<\/p>\n
Hours earlier, Trump had said he was \u201cstrongly considering\u201d large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the US has temporarily suspended Ukraine\u2019s access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify, after Trump had already paused military aid to the country.<\/p>\n
It comes exactly one week after an extraordinary White House exchange, in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for being \u201cdisrespectful\u201d to the US.<\/p>\n
That public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Russia then conducted a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s threat of further sanctions on the already heavily sanctioned Russia was apparently in response to this attack. He said he was considering new tariffs because \u201cRussia is absolutely \u2018pounding\u2019 Ukraine on the battlefield right now\u201d.<\/p>\n
But within hours, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin was acting as anyone else would.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s hitting them [Ukraine] harder than he\u2019s been hitting them,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd I think probably anyone in that position would be doing that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that he believes Putin wants to end the war but he cannot say the same of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to know they [Ukraine] want to settle and I don\u2019t know they want to settle,\u201d Trump said, when asked why he had cut off aid to Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s direct diplomacy with Putin stunned Nato allies, because the West has shunned contacts with Moscow since Russia\u2019s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Despite Trump\u2019s row with Zelensky, the tone from his foreign policy team in the last two days has sounded more conciliatory towards Ukraine, after its arm-wrenching in the form of cutting off military and intelligence support.<\/p>\n
The Americans want Zelensky to sign a deal that would give them a major stake in Ukrainian minerals, and for him to agree to a quick truce with Moscow.<\/p>\n
Zelensky has been pushing for firm security guarantees for Kyiv, to be agreed as part of the deal. Speaking on Friday, Trump said such a security guarantee could be discussed later and would be the \u201ceasy part\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify on Friday that the US had temporarily suspended Ukrainian access to some high quality imagery from US satellites.<\/p>\n
Satellite imagery is an important tool during a war as it allows armies to gather intelligence on their rivals.<\/p>\n
Maxar, a US-based company, has contracts to provide satellite imagery to various governments and companies.<\/p>\n
One of those is the Global Enhanced GEOINT Deliver (GEGD) program, which gives users access to high quality imagery collected by the US government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US government has decided to temporarily suspend Ukrainian accounts in GEGD,\u201d Maxar told the BBC. \u201cEach customer makes their own decisions on how they use and share that data.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, part of the US Department of Defense, confirmed the suspension was \u201cin accordance with the administration\u2019s directive on support to Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n
Next week, Trump\u2019s senior officials will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet Zelensky\u2019s team amid growing pressure for him to sign up to Trump\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s president has said he hopes the talks will be \u201cmeaningful\u201d. On Friday, he said his country was \u201cready for peace as soon as possible\u201d and had proposed \u201cconcrete steps\u201d to achieve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day, new Russian strikes and reality itself prove that it is Russia that must be forced to peace,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Zelensky has expressed regret in the days since his public clash with Trump and worked to mend relations with the US.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Trump had received a letter from Zelensky that included an \u201capology\u201d and \u201csense of gratitude\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, we get things back on track with the Ukrainians, and everything resumes,\u201d Witkoff said.<\/p>\n
UK officials have said around 20 countries are interested in joining a \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d to help Ukraine, as European leaders forge ahead with plans for much bigger military expenditure.<\/p>\n
Fighting on the ground in Ukraine continued on Friday, with five people killed by Russian troops in the Donetsk region, according to local authorities.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it \u201cmore difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine\u201d than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations. The US is \u201cdoing very well with Russia\u201d, and \u201cit may be easier dealing with\u201d Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}