Well, Donald Trump’s top negotiators have not closed a deal with Russia’s president to end his so-called special military operation in Ukraine. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Wood calls and Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, sat with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting that lasted nearly five hours. A top Kremlin aide says those talks were, quote, constructive and highly substantive.
But there are other points that do not suit us.
Putin appears to be accusing Europe of altering the Trump administration’s original 28 point peace plan. That proposal had been criticized for appearing to favor Russia. He also said this just means we are not planning to go to war with Europe. I have already spoken about this a hundred times.
But if Europe suddenly wants to go to war with us and starts, we are ready right now. Well, shortly after the meeting ended, a top Russian official posted a single word on social media. Productive. Punctuated by a dove and an olive branch emoji. We’ll see you then.
Salma Abdelaziz joins us now live from London. Selma. No deal. Perhaps. No surprise there.
But what comes next? And what more are you learning about these talks? Five, nearly five hours, nearly five hours of talks described as substantive by the Russians, but no compromise, no deal. Now, I do want to say that we have no readout from the American side as to how these talks progressed. From the Russian side, we are hearing positive indications, but of course, no agreement.
Now, there’s been a lot of concern about how the United States is handling these talks.
