U.S. President Donald Trump stated that both Moscow and Kyiv are seeking to resolve the Ukraine conflict, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is now more open to peace following the recent drop in oil prices.
“I think Russia, with the price of oil right now, oil has gone down, we are in a good position to settle, they want to settle. Ukraine wants to settle,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
The price of oil – which drives the Russian economy – has fallen around $15 a barrel since the start of the year. OPEC+ will accelerate oil output hikes, sources told Reuters.
“We’ve come a long way, and it could be something will happen, but hopefully it will,” Trump said.
Deadly Conflict
Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured, and Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Trump noted that Putin had proposed a three-day ceasefire to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
“As you know, President Putin just announced a three-day ceasefire – which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot if you knew where we started from,” Trump said. “This is a war that should never have happened”.
High Casualty Tally
Trump said that the number of those killed in the war was far higher than reported by most media organisations. Neither side in the war publishes up-to-date casualty figures.
The Kremlin, asked on Monday about a possible meeting between Trump and Putin in Saudi Arabia, said that a meeting was necessary but that Putin had no trips to the Middle East planned for mid-May.
Trump has said he plans to visit Saudi Arabia as early as May.
Trump was asked by a reporter about whether or not he would order an investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.
A sharp pressure drop on the pipelines under the Baltic Sea was registered on September 26, 2022, and seismologists detected explosions, triggering a wave of speculation about who sabotaged the multibillion-dollar project that carried Russian gas to Germany.
“They said Russia blew it up-yeah,” Trump said in comments which indicated he doubted that Moscow was behind the attack. “I think a lot of people know who blew it up.”
The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported that Ukraine – which has repeatedly denied involvement – was behind the attack. Ukraine has repeatedly denied involvement.
Russia has accused Western powers, including the United States and Britain, of being involved in the attack, but has published no evidence to support its theory.
(With inputs from Reuters)
