The incoming US president has said he wants to prevent the conflict from becoming “something much bigger”
US President-elect Donald Trump has said he will “probably” reduce American aid to Ukraine once he takes office, in an interview aired hours after he called for an “immediate ceasefire” between Moscow and Kiev.
During an interview broadcast by NBC News on Sunday, Trump was asked whether Ukraine should “prepare for less aid from the United States” after his inauguration next month. “Possibly. Yeah, probably, sure,” Trump replied.
The US has allocated $131.36 billion for Ukraine since February 2022, according to figures published by the Pentagon earlier this month. Just under $90 billion of this amount has actually been transferred, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised that he would end the Ukraine conflict within “24 hours” of taking office, without offering any specifics on how he would achieve this. However, it is widely believed that he would use the threat of a reduction in US aid to force Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to negotiate, and the threat of increasing said aid to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into talks.
Trump met with Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Saturday, for an impromptu discussion that he was reportedly “reluctant” to attend. None of the three men spoke to the press afterwards or revealed any specific details of the 40-minute meeting.
However, Trump took to social media on Sunday to claim that “Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” before calling for “an immediate ceasefire and negotiations,” lest the conflict “turn into something much bigger, and far worse.” Trump also claimed that Ukraine has lost 400,000 soldiers since 2022, a figure far higher than any body count published by Kiev or any of its Western backers.
In a separate social media post on Sunday, Trump claimed that the conflict has cost Russia 600,000 troops, a figure that the Kremlin said is based on false information provided by Ukraine for propaganda purposes.
Zelensky has denied seeking a swift deal. In a post on X later on Sunday, he claimed that the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.” Putin, he declared, “can only be stopped by strength,” and that Ukraine will only settle for what he termed a “just peace.”
The Ukrainian leader insists that his ten-point ‘peace formula’ is the only viable roadmap for ending the conflict. However, the Kremlin has dismissed this document – which demands that Russia restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders, pay reparations, and surrender its own officials to war crimes tribunals – as “delusional.”
Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – must be achieved.
Pressed by NBC host Kristen Welker, Trump refused to say whether he had spoken to Putin since winning last month’s presidential election. “I don’t want to say anything about that, because I don’t want to do anything that will impede the negotiation,” he told Welker.
