WASHINGTON: A top adviser to President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States needs a Ukrainian leader who is willing to secure a lasting peace with Russia but that it is not clear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is prepared to do so.
\nDays after a contentious Oval Office exchange between Trump, Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said Washington wants to secure a permanent peace between Moscow and Kyiv that involves territorial concessions in exchange for European-led security guarantees.
\nAsked whether Trump wants Zelensky to resign, Waltz told CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union\u201d program: \u201cWe need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians and end this war.\u201d
\n\u201cIf it becomes apparent that President Zelensky\u2019s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands,\u201d Waltz added.
\nHouse of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson also suggested that a different leader might be necessary in Ukraine if Zelensky does not comply with US demands.
\n\u201cSomething has to change. Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that,\u201d the top congressional Republican told NBC\u2019s Meet the Press program.
\nThe extraordinary Oval Office exchange on Friday put tensions between Zelensky and Trump on public display. As a result, an agreement between Ukraine and the United States to jointly develop Ukraine\u2019s natural resources was left unsigned and in limbo.
\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t clear to us that President Zelensky was ready to negotiate and in good faith toward an end of this war,\u201d Waltz said.
\nOn ABC\u2019s This Week program, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has not spoken with Zelensky since Friday.
\nRubio also said he has not spoken to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha since Trump and Zelensky clashed at the White House and failed to sign an expected minerals deal.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll be ready to reengage when they\u2019re ready to make peace,\u201d Rubio said on the show.
\nUS Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said on \u201cThis Week\u201d that she was \u201cappalled\u201d by the clash in the Oval Office and that she met with Zelensky before he went to the White House on Friday and he had been excited to sign an expected minerals deal.
\n\u201cThere is still an opening here\u201d for a peace deal, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: A top adviser to President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States needs a Ukrainian leader who is willing to secure a lasting peace with Russia but that it is not clear Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is prepared to do so. Days after a contentious Oval Office exchange between Trump, Zelensky and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77862,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77844\/revisions\/77862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}