Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump about the war in Ukraine Saturday as European allies fear a withdrawal of U.S. support for Kyiv’s efforts to defend against Russia’s invasion.
A brief readout from Trudeau’s office Saturday afternoon said the two leaders spoke about the war, now entering its fourth year, ahead of a virtual G7 meeting scheduled for Monday.
The conversation came as both Moscow and Washington have signalled that talks are progressing for a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — a remarkable change in U.S. diplomatic strategy that sought to isolate Russia after its wholescale invasion of Ukraine.
It also comes as Ukraine and its European allies fear the U.S. president may scale back its support of Kyiv’s war effort.
Russian and U.S. representatives last week agreed to start working towards ending the war in Ukraine — without Ukrainian representatives at the table. Senior U.S. officials have publicly mused that Ukraine must give up its aspirations to join the NATO security alliance and accept Russia’s seizure of substantial tracts of their country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that his country would not accept any outcome of talks that Kyiv wasn’t party to.
On Friday, Trump walked back his suggestion made earlier in the week that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion.
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“Russia attacked, but they shouldn’t have let him attack,” Trump told a Fox News personality during an interview.
Later on Friday, at the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that the war “doesn’t affect the United States very much. It’s on the other side of the ocean. It does affect Europe.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is due to visit Washington next week for talks focused on Ukraine. He has stressed that no decisions about the country’s future can be made without Kyiv’s involvement.
Starmer spoke to Zelenskyy on Saturday and reiterated, “the U.K.’s ironclad support for Ukraine and commitment to securing a just and enduring peace to bring an end to Russia’s illegal war,” the prime minister’s office said.
After a call with Zelenskyy last week, Trudeau reiterated that any “sustainable peace” in Europe requires security for Ukraine.
“The leaders stressed that any peaceful end to the conflict must include Ukraine at the negotiating table,” Trudeau’s office said after the call.
According to Trudeau’s office, the prime minister also discussed border issues that Trump has made an irritant in bilateral relations, and used as a justification to threaten 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods crossing the border.
“The Prime Minister also updated the President about shared progress at the Canada-U.S. border combatting fentanyl, including the work of Canada’s new Fentanyl Czar and Canada’s listing of cartels,” the PMO’s readout, released Saturday afternoon, read.
“The Prime Minister noted seizures of fentanyl at the border have decreased.”
Trump said during a speech at the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday he’s “not happy with Canada” and Mexico about fentanyl coming into the U.S., while talking about tariffs he has imposed on China and other countries.
He also said the U.S. is “pretty close to a deal” with Ukraine that would lead not just to peace talks with Russia, but also give the U.S. access to Ukrainian natural resources — including oil and rare earth minerals — as payback for the US$350 billion in aid provided under the Biden administration.
Zelenskyy initially rejected an initial critical minerals proposal from the U.S., claiming it asked more of Ukraine than it has received in American aid, but said Friday his government was reviewing the deal and working toward a solution.
–with files from the Associated Press.
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