Prior to the Easter truce, Trump said that the U.S. government would abandon efforts to mediate an end to the war if either side refused to cooperate.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he hopes Russia and Ukraine “will make a deal this week” to end the war in Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Easter truce” is nearing an end.
Trump made the remarks in a Truth Social
post just hours before the temporary cease-fire was set to expire, saying that both Ukraine and Russia “will then start to do big business with the United States of America” once they reach a peace deal to fully end the war.
Fighting in Ukraine has persisted since Putin ordered a full invasion of the country in February 2022. Putin
declared an “Easter truce” on April 19, directing his forces to halt all military operations from 6 p.m. Moscow time until midnight on April 20.
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi
stated on social media platform X from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s account that the truce did not extend to the Kursk region, noting that Russia had violated it 2,935 times, with over 800 of those incidents involving heavy weaponry.
Of those instances, Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions 1,882 times and launched more than 950 drone attacks on certain areas, Syrskyi reported.
“This day was not enough for Moscow to respond either to the proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire after Easter, or to the proposal to at least extend the ceasefire in the sky, refraining from missile and drone strikes on civilian infrastructure,” he added.
Zelenskyy vowed that “the nature of Ukraine’s actions will remain symmetrical: ceasefire will be met with ceasefire, and Russian strikes will be met with our own in defense.”
The Russian Defense Ministry also
accused Ukraine of violating the cease-fire over 1,000 times, stating that Ukrainian forces had targeted Russian positions 444 times and carried out more than 900 drone attacks on regions including Crimea and the Russian border areas of the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod.
“As a result, there are deaths and injuries among the civilian population, as well as damage to civilian facilities,” the ministry stated on Sunday.
Zelenskyy has earlier
urged Russia to extend the truce beyond Easter and agree to a 30-day cease-fire. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on April 20 that Putin has not given any order to extend the cease-fire in Ukraine,
according to the Russian media TASS.
Prior to the Easter truce, Trump
told reporters on April 18 that the U.S. government would abandon efforts to mediate an end to the war if either side refused to cooperate in reaching a peace deal.
“No specific number of days, but quickly. We want to get it done,” Trump said at the Oval Office. “Now, if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
The Trump administration has been working to broker a cease-fire deal between Russia and Ukraine to bring a permanent end to the war, which has been ongoing for three years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
said on April 18 that the United States would consider backing out of the peace negotiations unless there are clear signs of progress from both sides within “a matter of days.”
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we’re engaging both sides,” Rubio
told reporters following his meetings with European and Ukrainian officials in Paris.
“If it’s not possible—if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen—then I think the President’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done. We’ll do what we can on the margins,” he added.
Tom Ozimek and Jacob Burg contributed to this report.
