Trump says ’Crimea will stay with Russia’ as he seeks end to war in Ukraine
The Hindu
Trump pressures Ukraine to concede Crimea to Russia in exchange for ending the war, as tensions escalate.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that “Crimea will stay with Russia," the latest example of the U.S. leader pressuring Ukraine to make concessions to end the war while it remains under siege.
“Zelenskyy understands that,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time."
The U.S. President made the comments in a Time magazine interview conducted on Tuesday. Mr. Trump has been accusing Mr. Zelenskyy of prolonging the war by resisting negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Crimea is a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. It was seized by Russia in 2014, while U.S. President Barack Obama was in office, years before the full-scale invasion that began in 2022.
“They’ve had their submarines there for long before any period that we’re talking about, for many years. The people speak largely Russian in Crimea,” Mr. Trump said. “But this was given by Obama. This wasn’t given by Trump.”
Meanwhile, Russia has continued its bombardment. A drone struck an apartment building in a southeastern Ukrainian city, killing three people and injuring 10 others, officials said Friday, a day after Mr. Trump rebuked Russia’s leader for a deadly missile and drone attack on Kyiv.
A child and a 76-year-old woman were among the civilians killed in the nighttime drone strike in Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the head of the regional administration, Serhii Lysak, wrote on Telegram.
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