President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Ukraine should not target Moscow with strikes, after the Financial Times reported that Trump on 4 July had privately encouraged Ukraine to escalate attacks on Russia. <\/p>\n
Citing anonymous sources, the outlet said Trump also asked if Ukraine could do so if the US provided the country long-range weapons. <\/p>\n
But this week, the Republican president said the US was “not looking to do that”. <\/p>\n
In his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump was “merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing”, the White House told the BBC in a statement.<\/p>\n
“He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war”, continued press secretary Karoline Leavitt. <\/p>\n
On Monday, Trump announced he would send weapons to Ukraine and warned of more tariffs on Russia if the country did not come to a ceasefire deal with Ukraine in 50 days.<\/p>\n
The president said the US would impose 100% secondary tariffs targeting Russia’s remaining trade partners if a peace deal with Ukraine was not reached in that timeline. <\/p>\n
Among the weapons involved in the latest deal, Trump said “everything” including defensive Patriot missiles, though the exact details are not yet known. <\/p>\n
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said that the US, Europe and Ukraine are still working through the details of the weapons agreed in the deal. <\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Russia has escalated its drone and missile attacks in Ukraine, killing more than 230 civilians in June, according to the United Nations – the largest number killed in a month during the three years of war. <\/p>\n
Trump’s question to Zelensky about whether the country could strike Moscow came a day after a “bad” call between the US president and Putin, according to the Financial Times. <\/p>\n
“Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow?\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009Can you hit St Petersburg too?” Trump asked on a separate call with Zelensky after, the outlet reported. <\/p>\n
Ukraine has struck several targets deep inside Russia this year with missiles provided by the US and the UK. <\/p>\n
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has pledged to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
But the promise has proven more complicated than expected, and Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Russian leader and the lack of progress in ending the conflict.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Trump told the BBC that he was “disappointed” in Russian President Vladimir Putin. “But I’m not done with him,” he added. <\/p>\n
Trump also said he was “working at” getting Putin to put an end to killing in Ukraine. <\/p>\n
“We’ll have a great conversation. I’ll say: ‘That’s good, I’ll think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv.”<\/p>\n
Two rounds of ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine took place earlier this year but no other meetings have been scheduled. <\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that Trump’s pledge to raise tariffs and send weapons to Ukraine was seen “not as a signal for peace but as a signal to continue the war”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Ukraine should not target Moscow with strikes, after the Financial Times…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-271211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114872557478554372","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}