Trump calls for ‘immediate’ cease-fire in Ukraine and says a US withdrawal from NATO is possible

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate cease-fire in Russia’s war with Ukraine and the president-elect renewed warnings that he was open to pulling the United States out of NATO.

Trump made his cease-fire proposal after a weekend meeting in Paris with French and Ukrainian leaders, claiming in a social media post that Kyiv “would like to make a deal” to end the more than 1,000-day war. The Kremlin responded that it was open to negotiations, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautioned that any deal would have to pave the way to a lasting peace.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Russia and Ukraine have each lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a war that “should never have started.”

“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed,” Trump said. He urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to act to bring an end to the fighting.

Trump’s remarks came after the meeting Saturday with Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron that Zelenskyy described as “constructive.”

In a post Sunday on the Telegram messaging app, Zelenskyy cautioned that Ukraine needs a “just and robust peace, that Russians will not destroy within a few years.”

“When we talk about an effective peace with Russia, we must talk first of all about effective peace guarantees. Ukrainians want peace more than anyone else. Russia brought war to our land,” Zelenskyy said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Moscow’s long-standing message that it is open to talks with Ukraine. He referenced a decree by Zelenskyy from October 2022 that formally declared the prospect of any talks “impossible” as long as Putin was the Russian leader.

That decree came after Putin proclaimed four occupied regions of Ukraine to be a part of Russia, in what Kyiv and the West was a clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, and despite Moscow lacking full military control over the areas.

For most of the war, Kyiv’s official position has been to call for a full withdrawal of Russian troops from internationally recognized Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, as a condition for peace talks.

In a separate social media update, Zelenskyy asserted that Kyiv has so far lost 43,000 soldiers since Moscow’s all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, while 370,000 have been wounded.

Both Russia and Ukraine have been reluctant to publish official casualty figures. Western officials have said that the past few months of grinding positional warfare in eastern Ukraine have meant record losses for both sides, with tens of thousands killed and wounded each month.

Trump has said before he would like to see a quick cease-fire in Ukraine. Sunday’s proposal was more pressing, and the quick responses from Ukraine and Russia demonstrated the seriousness with which they regarded the idea from the incoming American president.

The Biden administration and other supporters of Ukraine in the United States and abroad have made a point of not being seen to press Ukraine for an immediate truce. Ukraine’s allies fear a quick deal would be largely on the terms of its more powerful neighbor, forcing damaging concessions on Ukraine and allowing Russia to potentially resume the war again once it has rebuilt its military.

Separately, Trump in an NBC News interview that aired Sunday renewed his warning to NATO allies that he did not see continued U.S. participation in the Western military alliance as a given during his second term in office.

Trump has long complained that European and the Canadian governments in the mutual-defense bloc are freeloading on military spending by the U.S., by far the most powerful partner in NATO. NATO and its member governments say a majority of countries in the bloc are now hitting voluntary targets for military spending, due in part to pressure from Trump in his first term.

Asked in the interview taped Friday whether he would consider the possibility of pulling out of NATO, Trump indicated that was an open question.

“If they’re paying their bills, and if I think they’re treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely I’d stay with NATO,” he told “Meet the Press.”

But if not, he was asked if he would consider pulling the U.S. out of the alliance. Trump responded, “Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.”

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Kozlowska reported from London.