President Donald Trump said on March 9 that he believes talks this week between the United States and Ukraine over ending the conflict with Russia will “make progress.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is visiting Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from March 10 to 12 for negotiations with Ukrainian officials aimed at ending the Russia–Ukraine war, according to a March 9 statement from the Department of State.
Trump flew back to Washington on Sunday and told journalists on Air Force One, “A lot of people died this week, as you know, in Ukraine, not only Ukrainians, but Russians. So, I think ... we’re going to make a lot of progress, I believe, this week.”
Asked if he would consider ending the suspension of intelligence sharing, Trump said, “We just about have. ... We really just about have.”
“I think they will sign the minerals deal ... I want them to want peace. Right now, they haven’t shown it to the extent that they should,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “I think right now they haven’t, but I think they will be, and I think it’s going to become evident over the next two or three days. Money is one thing. We spent $350 billion on this, but the big thing is human life ... Thousands of young soldiers died this week. Hundreds of people died in cities in Ukraine. And we got to get it done.”
He reiterated that the war between Russia and Ukraine would not have started had he been president in 2022.
Trump said he thought there would be a “good result” from this week’s meeting in Jeddah.
He described Ukraine as a killing field. “It’s a senseless war and we are going to get it stopped,” he told reporters.
Intelligence, including information from U.S. military satellites, had helped Ukraine to track Russian troop movements and select targets.
“We want to do anything we can to get Ukraine to be serious about getting something done,” Trump said. “They don’t have the cards. Nobody really has the cards. Russians don’t have the cards, they don’t have them. What you have to do is you have to make a deal, and you have to stop the killing.”
Last week, France said it would continue sharing military intelligence with Ukraine after Washington announced that it was pausing cooperation with Kyiv.
French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu told France Inter radio on March 6, “Our intelligence is sovereign. We have intelligence that we allow Ukraine to benefit from.”
Ukraine has no military satellites of its own. Although it has access to satellite internet services provided by Elon Musk’s Starlink, the terms of its use are limited.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said on Feb. 9, 2023, that the company was restricting Ukraine’s military from using Starlink to control drones in the region for military purposes against Russia.
In February 2023, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly wrote on social media platform X: “Ukraine desperately needs your continued support. Please restore the full functionality of your Starlink satellites. Defense from a genocidal invasion is not an offensive capability. It’s survival. Innocent lives will be lost. You can help. Thank you.”
“Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other Internet connectivity has been destroyed,” Musk said in 2023. “But we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.”
Eutelsat, a European satellite company, controls the only global fleet of satellites in low Earth orbit, besides Starlink.
