Moscow, Sept 24: Russia on Wednesday rejected US President Donald Trump’s remarks about Ukraine retaking lost territories with the help of the EU, saying it is an “integral part of European security”.
President Trump said Tuesday that Ukraine can win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic shift from the US leader’s call on Kyiv to make concessions.
Trump offered his position in a social media posting soon after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
The Kremlin cannot agree with all of Trump’s statements regarding the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with RosBusinessConsulting (RBC) radio.
He attributed the US president’s change in tone to his meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York.
“Trump heard Zelenskyy’s version of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and this information apparently influenced his assessment”, Peskov noted and underlined that the Kremlin cannot agree with everything the American president said.
“Putin and Russia are in BIG economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump said on Truth Social.
“After seeing the Economic trouble (the war) is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump said.
“You cannot deal with European security at the expense of Russia’s security. Moreover, no matter what anyone says, even now Russia is an integral part of European security,” the Kremlin spokesman said, responding to Trump’s comment.
Peskov said that Moscow favours an improvement in Russian-American relations in parallel with the Ukrainian settlement, but Washington is currently linking these processes.
“As before, perhaps to our regret, the American side still pegs any negotiations, any cooperative processes, only to the Ukrainian settlement. In other words, it says: ‘Let’s settle Ukraine, and then everything else will follow,” Peskov said.
“From our point of view, we are absolutely not obliged to do this together, and it would be much more in line with our bilateral interests — and the interests of the US — to pursue these tracks in parallel, to bring our bilateral relations out of this stupor, and to restart trading and economic cooperation,” he added.
On the Kremlin’s late reaction, Peskov said it was late at night in Moscow yesterday and would have been strange to comment. (PTI)
