Claims that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against further escalation of the war in Ukraine have been denied by the Kremlin. The Washington Post reported that Mr. Trump cautioned Mr. Putin in a telephone call, referring to America’s strong military presence in Europe. However, the spokesman of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, described the report as “pure fiction,” while Mr. Trump’s team would not comment on any telephone calls involving him.
But Trump’s stance on the nearly three-year conflict also has been a point of dispute. Whilst he promised to end the war, he has not yet specified any concrete strategy, which raised concerns on the part of Ukrainian President Zelensky and other European leaders that America might abandon them. Zelensky underlined how important U.S. assistance was for Ukraine’s resistance and warned that without it, undermining their efforts before Russia’s advances would occur.
The EU leaders called on Europe to toughen its support for Ukraine amidst the increasingly intense Russian attacks on civilian and strategic targets. British and EU officials make it plain that any eventual peace settlement will have to be durable, with Europe shouldering more of the burden given the question marks over the U.S. in the longer term. On both sides, an exchange of increasingly heavy drone strikes and artillery bombardments, the call from Ukraine for robust international support becomes more insistent.
