Ukraine war briefing: Trump sees conflict as ‘very unfair’ for war dead and US taxpayers, says White House

Donald Trump views the Ukraine war as very unfair on not only those killed but also on US taxpayers, the White House has said. Speaking in Washington after two days of trilateral peace talks in Geneva ended without a breakthrough, the White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there had been “meaningful progress made” with pledges “to continue to work towards a peace deal together”. But she also said Trump viewed the situation – nearly four years into the war – as “very unfair, not just for Russians and Ukrainians who have lost their lives, but also for the American people and the American taxpayer who were footing the bill for this war effort before President Trump put a stop to it”. In March last year the Trump administration suspended delivery of all US military aid to Ukraine, blocking billions of dollars’ worth of crucial shipments, as the White House piled pressure on Kyiv to reach a peace deal with Russia. The US and its allies later developed a mechanism where Ukraine is supplied with weapons from US stocks bought with funds from Nato countries.

After the two days of US-brokered talks in Geneva between Ukraine and Russia ended on Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was dissatisfied with the outcome. Officials from Kyiv and Moscow both said the discussions were difficult. At the conclusion the delegations said they would meet again, without providing a date, while Zelenskyy and the White House suggested discussions could occur soon. As fighting continued in the war, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address: “As of today, we cannot say that the result is sufficient. The military discussed certain issues seriously and substantively. Sensitive political matters, possible compromises and the necessary meeting of leaders have not yet been sufficiently addressed.”

Zelenskyy wrote on X as the two sides met in the US-mediated talks that Russia was “trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage”. Moments after his statement, the delegations broke off the talks after just two hours. Pjotr Sauer reports that Zelenskyy said after the talks that “some groundwork” had been done, “but for now the positions differ, because the negotiations were not easy”. The Ukrainian president said the status of Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which remains under Moscow’s control, were among the most contentious unresolved issues.

Russian crude shipments in January made up the smallest portion of India’s oil imports since late 2022, according to data from industry sources. India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer and consumer, ramped up purchases of discounted Russian oil after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with volumes topping 2m barrels per day in some months. However, western sanctions over the war and pressure to clinch a trade deal with the US have forced India to scale back Russian oil purchases, the data showed. China has, since November, replaced India as Russia’s top buyer of seaborne crude.

Ukraine imposed sanctions against the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, on Wednesday, vowing to “increase countermeasures” against Minsk for wartime assistance to close ally Russia. “We will significantly intensify countermeasures against all forms of [Lukashenko’s] assistance in the killing of Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said on social media. The Belarusian presidency’s press service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. With Lukashenko already under US and European sanctions, the move is largely symbolic.

The owner of Ukrainian football club Shakhtar Donetsk has donated more than $200,000 to the skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych. The athlete was disqualified from the Winter Olympics before competing over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the club said on Tuesday.

A delegation of Democratic US senators was returning Wednesday from a trip to Ukraine, hoping to spur action in Congress for a series of sanctions meant to economically cripple Moscow and pressure President Vladimir Putin to make key concessions in peace talks. It was the first time US senators have visited Odesa, an economically crucial Ukrainian Black Sea port city that has been particularly targeted by Russia in the war. “One of the things we heard wherever we stopped today was that the people of Ukraine want a peace deal, but they want a peace deal that preserves their sovereignty, that recognises the importance of the integrity of Ukraine,” said the senator Jeanne Shaheen.

Hungary is suspending its shipments of diesel to neighbouring Ukraine until interruptions to Russian oil supplies via a pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory are resolved, Hungary’s foreign minister said. Amid accusations from Hungary and Slovakia that Kyiv has deliberately held up supplies, Péter Szijjártó said in a video posted on social media that the interruption to oil deliveries was “a political decision made by the Ukrainian president himself”. Ukraine has denied such accusations.