US President Donald Trump set a two-week time frame for assessing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, as he ramped up his efforts to negotiate an end to the war.
“I would say within two weeks we’re going to know one way or the other,” he said in a telephone interview on August 21 when asked about the chances of a peace agreement, according to AFP.
“After that, we’ll have to maybe take a different tack,” Trump told Todd Starnes, a host for US right-wing media outlet Newsmax, without giving further details.
Trump, who had promised during last year’s presidential election to end the war in one day, has so far failed to achieve any major breakthroughs – more than three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
He met Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15 at a highly anticipated summit in Alaska that failed to reach an accord and saw Trump drop his push for an initial ceasefire.
On August 18, he held talks at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a number of European allies.
Those meetings raised hopes that Putin and Zelensky could meet directly for a peace summit, as both leaders initially appeared open to that option.
But Zelensky on August 21 accused Russia of “trying to avoid the necessity to meet” and said that it did not want to end the war.
Russia, meanwhile, said that Ukraine did not seem to be interested in “long-term” peace, accusing Kyiv of seeking security guarantees completely incompatible with Moscow’s demands.
That came after, late on on August 20-21, Russia launched 574 drones and 40 missiles on Ukraine in one of the heaviest bombardments in weeks, Ukrainian officials said, according to the BBC.
One person was killed in a drone and missile strike on the western city of Lviv, while 15 others were reported wounded in an attack on the south-western Transcarpathia region.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the strikes highlighted why efforts to bring it to an end were “so critical”.
Zelensky has said Ukraine was ready to meet Putin “in neutral Europe” – mooting Switzerland or Austria – adding that he was not against Istanbul either.
He has stated his willingness to meet Putin in “any format”, although he has poured cold water on the idea of talks taking place in Budapest, which he said “is not easy today”.
Trump has a track record of issuing two-week deadlines to deliberate on Ukraine and other issues.
In late May, he said he would assess within that period whether Putin was serious about achieving a peace deal, promising to respond “differently” if not.
Trump wrote on August 21 on his Truth Social platform that Ukraine cannot win the war without striking inside Russia, accusing former US president Joe Biden of only allowing Ukraine to “defend, not fight back”, The Kyiv Independent news outlet reported early on August 22.
Trump claimed the war would not have happened if he had been in office, adding: “Interesting times ahead!”
The remarks, according to the Ukraine outlet, differed from his position in December 2024, when, in an interview with Time magazine before taking office, he called it a “big mistake” for Washington to let Ukraine use US-supplied weapons against targets deep inside Russia, warning such strikes risked dangerous escalation.
The Biden administration had approved the use of US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles for strikes inside Russia in 2024.
