Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump warns Zelensky could miss ‘great opportunity’ for peace deal with Moscow
The US president said Zelensky has to ‘get moving’ as the next round of talks are set to be held in Geneva next week
Donald Trump has warned Volodymyr Zelensky that is he “going to have to get moving” if he wants to reach a peace agreement with Moscow.
Zelensky said last week the White House had set Ukraine and Russia a deadline of June to make a deal to end the war.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, the US president said: "Zelensky's going to have to get moving, Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky's going to have to get moving otherwise he's going to miss a great opportunity."
US-brokered trilateral peace talks began in January in Abu Dhabi, which marked the first meeting attended by Moscow and Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The next round of trilateral talks will be held in Geneva next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
President Trump’s comments come as President Zelensky, Marco Rubio, Sir Keir Starmer, French president Emmanuel Macron, and other world leaders gather at the Munich Security Conference.
Speaking before he departed the US, Mr Rubio said the world is at a “defining moment”, adding: "The Old World is gone, frankly, the world I grew up in.”
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Time for Europe to become geopolitical power, Macron says
Europe must turn its focus to long-term strategic thinking, including creating deep-strike capabilities and assessing how France's nuclear deterrent can fit into the bloc's future security architecture, France's president said on Friday.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, president Emmanuel Macron dismissed accusations that Europe was decaying and defended its push to tackle disinformation and the excesses of social media that were harming Western democracies.
"This is the right time for audacity. This is the right time for a strong Europe," Macron said. "Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power. It was not part of our DNA."
Macron, who is set to enter his final year in office, said Europe would still face an aggressive Russia even if there were a deal on the Ukraine war and that it could not cave into Russian demands or allow a short-term accord that would not resolve core issues.
"The Europeans must start this work with their own thinking and their own interests. So my proposal today is to launch a series of consultations on this important issue, which we have started to flesh out with our British and German colleagues, but in the broader European consultation with all the colleagues here, with a lot of capacities, a lot of strategic thinking," Macron said.
Trump wants peace deal 'in one big package' like the 'one, big, beautiful bill'
Volodymyr Zelensky said Donald Trump wanted to agree to a peace deal “all at once”, as he “like things in one big package,” like he did with his “one, big, beautiful bill”.
His comments, which were reported by The Guardian, come after the US president warned Zelensky he was “going to have to get moving” if he wanted to reach a peace agreement with Russia.
But speaking from the Munich Security Conference, the Ukrainian president said that the process of talks was important as it needed to provide Ukraine with genuine reassurance, the newspaper reported.
In pictures: World leaders gather at the Munich Security Conference
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Europe will still have to contend with an aggressive Russia, says Macron
Emmanuel Macron said western countries will still have a deal with an aggressive Russia even if it was no longer attacking Ukraine.
Speaking from the Munich Security Conference on Friday, the French president said that Europe must put pressure on Russia rather than cave in to their demands.
”We should exhibit strength and tenacity on Ukraine,” he said.
"This is the right time for audacity. This is the right time for a strong Europe.”
US senator says supporters of Russia must face 'a price to pay'
US Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen says she's worried about what the outcome of any peace agreement would be.
"We are here because we support Ukraine. I want to make sure that whatever outcome happens, it's one that Ukrainians are comfortable with," she told the Munich Security Conference.
"I applaud Donald Trump for his effort to get the parties to the table, but the US and the Trump administration should be putting more pressure on Vladimir Putin.
"We need to ensure there is a price to pay for supporting Russia's war machine."
She stressed that the issue was also one of American security, and was also being watched carefully by Chinese president Xi Jinping.
"If he thinks the West is going to walk away from Ukraine, he is absolutely sure we're going to walk away from Taiwan and walk away from the Indo-Pacific,” she said.
"What we're doing in supporting Ukraine is to make sure we send a message to dictators around the world that the free world is not going to accept what they're doing."
Cooper fails to rule out UK troops boarding Russian shadow fleet vessels
Yvette Cooper avoided ruling out the possibility of the British armed forces becoming involved in securing Russian shadow fleet vessels.
Asked whether UK troops could seize Russian boats in the future, Cooper says the UK has "already provided support for action against the Russian shadow fleet".
Pushed on whether that means UK troops would be willing to stop, raid and seize a shadow vessel, Cooper failed to commit but said: "We will look continually at every opportunity we can to put pressure on the shadow fleet.”
She added that while Europeans know "we need to invest more in defence", peace cannot be reached without security guarantees.
"Ukraine needs the security of knowing this is not just a peace for Putin to rearm and come again, in order to get to the peace agreement in the first place, we need that, as well as much greater pressure on Putin.”
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Yvette Cooper 'hugely sceptical' of Putin's commitment to peace
Foreign minister Yvette Cooper has said she was “hugely sceptical” of Putin’s commitment to peace and called for continued pressure on the Russian economy.
She told the Munich Security Conference: “I really hope that these talks can make progress and can get to a peace agreement, but I still think we are going to need to keep intensifying that economic pressure on Russia, including tightening the chokehold on oil and gas, tightening the chokehold on the Russian shadow fleet, keeping up that economic pressure with additional sanctions, and I hope to a maritime services ban as well, so we keep ramping up the pressure on Russia’s economy.
“The economy has already been heavily hit, but we need to keep that pressure up further.”
Trump says Zelensky 'going to have to get moving' to secure peace deal
Donald Trump has said that Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky' is "going to have to get moving" if he hopes to reach a peace agreement.
It comes after Zelensky said last week that the White House has set Russia and Ukraine a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the war, which has been ongoing since 2022.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump was asked about the possibility of elections in Ukraine and said: "Zelensky's going to have to get moving, Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky's going to have to get moving otherwise he's going to miss a great opportunity."
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