Trump says he would resolve Russia-Ukraine war in a day. Russian ambassador to UN says he can’t

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he could solve the war between Russia and Ukraine on a day if he is elected again as president of the United States. The Russian ambassador to the United Nations says he cannot.

Asked to respond to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s claim, Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Monday that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be resolved in one day.”

On a show in May 2023, Trump said: “They are dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I will make it so, I will make it so within 24 hours.” He added that this would happen after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And he continues to repeat this on the campaign trail.

And in the last week’s debate With President Joe Biden, Trump said that “if we had a real president, a president who knew… who was respected by Putin… he would never have invaded Ukraine.”

Nebenzia said the war could have ended in April 2022 in Istanbul, when Russia and Ukraine were “very close” to a deal. Moscow had invaded its neighbour two months earlier, on 24 February 2022, although Russia insists its “special military operation” began in 2014 after fighting in eastern Ukraine resulted in Moscow seizing the Crimean peninsula.

The Russian ambassador blamed the Western supporters of Ukraine to block the April 2022 peace deal and tell kyiv to keep fighting Russia.

Now, he said, Zelenskyy “is running around with his so-called peace plan, which is, of course, not a peace plan, but a joke.”

Meeting in Switzerland last month, nearly 80 countries called for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” to be the basis of any peace deal to end the war. But some key developing nations did not sign on and Russia did not attend the conference.

Nebenzia referred to the offer made by Putin on June 14 to “immediately” order a ceasefire in Ukraine and begin negotiations if kyiv begins to withdraw its troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and abandons its plans to join NATO.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has promised not to give up any territoryrejected what he called Putin’s ultimatum to give up more land.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Nebenzia’s remarks.

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