Trump says White House had ‘serious discussions’ with Russia about Ukraine war

US President Donald Trump has said his administration has had “very serious” discussions with Russia about the war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the almost three-year conflict.

“We will be speaking and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.”

Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were “already talking.”

Asked if he has already spoken directly with Putin, Trump said only, “I don’t want to say that.”

Trump has said repeatedly he wouldn’t have allowed the conflict to start if he had been in office, even though he was president as fighting grew in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces and separatists backed by Moscow, ahead of Putin sending in tens of thousands of troops in 2022.

Since returning to office, Trump has criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he should have made a deal with Putin to avoid the conflict.

In a Fox News interview earlier in January, Trump ridiculed Zelenskyy as “talking so brave,” when Ukraine was so dependent on US aid to fight its war.

“They were brave, but we gave them billions of dollars,” Trump said.

Ukraine currently relies on the US for around 40% of its military needs and since February 2022, Washington has sent Kyiv more than $65 billion (€62 billion).

In a recent interview with Russian state television, Putin praised Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who is focused on US interests.

“We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current US president,” Putin said.

“I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”

The Russian president’s statement was also a blunt endorsement of Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud that he alleges took place.

In his 2024 election campaign, Trump said he could end the Ukraine war “within a day” and criticised Biden’s administration for spending billions in US taxpayer money on military and economic aid for Kyiv to help it fight back against Russia.

Trump’s relationship with Putin has been scrutinised since his 2016 campaign for president, when he called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent.

Trump publicly sided with Putin over US intelligence officials on whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help him and Trump has praised the Russian leader and even called him “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.