United States President Donald Trump has defended sanction waivers for Russia, saying he wants to keep Moscow at the bargaining table and accusing his counterpart in Kyiv of not wanting to end the war in Ukraine, Al Jazeera reports.
Trump made the comments on Truth Social on Sunday in response to criticism of his decision to block numerous sanctions on Russia just days before they were due to take effect.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he said.
The move has triggered a significant diplomatic fallout between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the past week.
Zelenskyy said that waiving sanctions on Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, “will hurt Ukraine”, telling NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that it would strengthen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.
“We can’t compare me and Putin. He’s [an] aggressor. He occupied us. He killed adults and children, his soldiers. He’s a terrorist, and that’s why I hope that President Trump will be very clear with this position.”
Trump reiterated his claim that Zelenskyy does not want the war on his country to end, saying on Truth Social that Kyiv was launching attacks on diesel refineries in Russia despite knowing it was “seriously hurting the world diesel markets”.
“Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him… he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” Trump wrote.
Trump announced plans on October 9 for Russia to supply more than 300,000 metric tonnes of diesel to US and global markets to tackle fuel prices that have soared since the US and Israel launched war on Iran in late February. The move led Tehran to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global energy exports transited before the war.
