The White House continued to pressure Kyiv on Thursday to end the war with Russia, calling on it to soften its criticism and quickly sign a rare minerals agreement.
“They need to tone down their criticism, carefully review, and sign that agreement,” said White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
“Ukraine’s resistance regarding the minerals agreement and the way Trump is conducting peace negotiations is simply unacceptable, considering everything the United States (U.S.) has done for Ukraine,” he added.
Waltz made this statement a day after Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy exchanged insults.
Trump called Zelenskyy a ‘dictator without elections’, to which Zelenskyy responded that Trump lives in a bubble of disinformation and is repeating Moscow’s arguments.
Trump demanded that Ukraine repay the U.S. aid in the form of rare minerals worth 500 billion dollars.
Zelenskyy responded that the U.S. had given Ukraine 67 billiondollars in weapons and 31.5 billion dollars in budget support, not 500 billion dollars, and stated that he could not sell his country.
However, Waltz said that the differences between the U.S. and Ukraine are not irreconcilable. “The president also said how much he loves the Ukrainian people.”
Ukraine and European leaders are angry about being excluded from the peace negotiations that began on Tuesday in Riyadh after Trump and Putin spoke by phone last week.
Waltz denied that U.S. allies and Ukraine were not being consulted.
“There is a term for this in diplomacy. It’s called ‘shuttle diplomacy’ because bringing everyone to the table at the same time simply hasn’t worked in the past,” he said.
“So, we established contact with one side, then the other, and then we will have a process moving forward under President Trump’s leadership,” he explained, N1 writes.
