US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has ‘really let me down’ during a state visit to the UK.
The US leader spoke alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as they upped the pressure on Russia during a joint press conference.
He accused the Kremlin leader of ‘letting me down’ in his quest for peace in Ukraine, joining Starmer in condemning Russia’s almost 3 1/2 year invasion of its neighbor.
The US president’s comments at the press conference with the Prime Minister came days after Russia violated Polish airspace with 19 drones and then Romanian airspace with a single drone, both NATO members.
There is no sign of a ceasefire of peace deal despite months of Washington-led talks, and Trump’s ultimatums and deadlines for Putin to respond to proposals have passed without palpable consequences.
Sir Keir told reporters the allies were ‘working together to end the killing in Ukraine’.
“In recent days, Putin has shown his true face, mounting the biggest attack since the invasion began, with yet more bloodshed, yet more innocents killed, and unprecedented violations of NATO airspace,” he said, adding “These are not the actions of someone who wants peace.”
“We’ve discussed today how we can build our defenses further to support Ukraine and decisively increase the pressure on Putin to get him to agree a peace deal that will last.”
British typhoon jets will join NATO’s ‘Eastern Sentry’ mission, flying over Poland alongside aircraft from Denmark, France and Germany.
Trump suggested that Russian president Vladimir Putin began the war because ‘he didn’t respect the leadership of the United States’ at the time.
He added: “Millions of people have died in that war, millions of souls, and they’re not American, they’re soldiers, mostly soldiers, as you know, the soldiers are being killed at levels nobody’s seen since the Second World War.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow launched thousands of drones and powerful glide bombs, as well as hundreds of missiles at targets inside the country just over the past fortnight.
Ukraine has responded by developing its own long-range drones that have hit deep into Russia, damaging installations that Russia needs to continue the war.
He said he thought the Ukraine war would be the ‘easiest’ to resolve but Vladimir Putin had ‘really let me down’, after last week’s incident in which multiple Russian drones were shot down (Eds: in Poland) by NATO forces.
‘He’s really let me down … I thought it might be among the easiest of the group,’ the president said.
“He has let me down. I mean, he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s, you know, than he’s killing. I mean, frankly, Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers. But, yeah, he’s let me down.”
