US Denies Trump Peace Push a ‘Betrayal’ of Ukraine

AFP/APP

Brussels, Belgium: Donald Trump’s defense chief denied Thursday that the US president was betraying Ukraine by opening talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, as blindsided European powers insisted they and Kyiv must have a seat at the table.

Trump on Wednesday stunned European allies by agreeing to launch negotiations with Moscow on ending the nearly three-year Ukraine war, in his first publicly announced phone call with Putin since returning to power.

The US president revealed he expected to meet Putin in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine peace talks, in an extraordinary thaw in relations that sparked fears Kyiv would be frozen out. That came after his administration poured cold water on Ukraine’s goals of reclaiming all its territory and pushing to join NATO’s protective umbrella.

“There is no betrayal there. There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said ahead of a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels. “That will require both sides recognizing things they don’t want to.”

Trump, who has been pushing for a quick end to the war, denied that Ukraine was being excluded from the direct negotiations between the two nuclear-armed superpowers.

The Kremlin said the talks with Putin lasted nearly one-and-a-half hours and that both leaders agreed “the time has come to work together.”

After speaking to Putin, the US president then called Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and shared details of his talks with the Kremlin leader.

Zelensky is set to meet US Vice President JD Vance at a security conference in Munich on Friday to kick off negotiations.

It will be the latest in a flurry of high-level meetings after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held talks in Kyiv on Wednesday on granting Washington access to Ukraine’s rare earth deposits in return for security support.