President Donald Trump has been privately fuming that his high-profile efforts at ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine have come up empty, and he's reportedly frustrated by the political predicament he's been boxed into by the failure.
The president campaigned on a promise to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, but more than seven months later that goal remains elusive, and he's starting to realize that he's unlikely to broker a summit between the warring nations' leaders, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reported The Atlantic.
“He just wants this over,” a senior official said. “It almost doesn’t matter how.”
That official and a former official who's in touch with the White House said the president has directed some of that frustration at Zelenskyy and European leaders, believing they must accept that Ukraine will have to give up territory to end the invasion, and he resents the quandary he's in.
"He is hesitant to commit more U.S. involvement, wary of alienating his MAGA base, and he has ratcheted up his efforts to blame the war on his predecessor, Joe Biden, even seven months into his own presidency," The Atlantic reported.
American and European officials were hopeful that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff might be able to reach a breakthrough with Putin before the Russian president met with Trump in Alaska, but the war appears no closer to ending, and U.S. allies are baffled by what transpired.
“There’s mostly confusion at this point,” a top European official said. “It’s not clear what Putin told Witkoff or Trump or if they understood him properly. It’s a puzzle that we’re all trying to solve.”