Senior UK defence figures are said to be in shock after Donald Trump began talks with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine “immediately.”
On Wednesday, the US president had a 90-minute call with Putin, and said they had agreed that talks to end the war in Ukraine should start immediately.
It’s almost three years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and it now controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
But Trump has sparked anger from the international community seemingly going over the heads of Zelensky and NATO in beginning a dialogue with Putin.
And it seems that his actions have caused shock amongst senior UK defence figures.
Newsnight’s political editor Nicholas Watt said that the UK defence administration believed Trump and the US were “doing this above Zelensky’s head.”
He added: “This is what I’m hearing of the US administration – ‘The ba*****s are gonna do this.'”
The UK defence secretary John Healey has said there “can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine,” whilst Sweden’s defence minister has said Nato membership for Ukraine is “not off the table.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Trump said he believed it was “unlikely” Ukraine would return to its “pre-2014 borders,” referring to when Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine.
The Republican president has made it clear for months that he is keen to see the Ukraine conflict come to an end, implying that he is happy to see Ukrainian land given up to Russia if it stops the war.
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