Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky openly hoped President Donald Trump‘s Gaza peace deal could also lead to peace in his country.
Trump helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas earlier this week and also aims to broker peace in Eastern Europe.
Zelensky said he called the president to congratulate him on the deal and suggested that the Israel-Hamas peace can spread to his country.
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“I had a call with US President Donald Trump—a very positive and productive one. I congratulated @POTUS on his success and the Middle East deal he was able to secure, which is an outstanding achievement. If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well—including the Russian war,” he wrote in a post on X.
The war in Ukraine has been continuing for more than 3.5 years, with at least hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers dead. Trump tried to jumpstart peace talks with Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin during an Alaskan summit in August, but negotiations have stalled.
Kai Trump, the president’s granddaughter, posted a video Saturday of her playing golf with Trump.
In the video, she asks how Trump’s second stint in the White House is going. The president claims he’s stopped seven wars, and then says, “Hopefully, we get Putin and Zelensky to stop killing everybody.”
Trump’s statement signals the war is still on his mind. Zelensky said in his call with the president that Russia has been attacking Ukrainian energy systems.
“I informed President Trump about Russia’s attacks on our energy system—and I appreciate his willingness to support us. We discussed opportunities to bolster our air defense, as well as concrete agreements that we are working on to ensure this. There are good options and solid ideas on how to truly strengthen us,” he wrote.
He suggested that the readiness for peace talks with Russia “can be achieved through strength.”
The president had been at an impasse with Ukraine over a deal that doesn’t include retention of their territory, which was a non-starter for Ukraine, but he’s crept closer to the Ukrainian position.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump posted on Truth Social in late September.
International observers of the war believe Trump will need to step in for peace negotiations to be jump-started.
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Talks “are dead unless something dramatic happens — that might be Trump turning his attention back to Ukraine, or things changing on the ground that change the calculations by either Russia or Ukraine or both,” Jenny Mathers, a lecturer in international politics at the U.K.’s Aberystwyth University, told the Kyiv Independent.
“At the moment, Moscow believes it has more to gain from continuing its attacks on Ukraine than from peace talks, and while Kyiv has agreed to restart talks on numerous occasions, Ukraine cannot afford to stop resisting Russian attacks or indeed to give in to any and all Russian demands just for the sake of a cessation of hostilities that would probably prove to be short-lived and perhaps entirely meaningless,” she added.