President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would call himself into action as the closer, should Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy near a peace deal. He made his comments as administration officials and European leaders fanned out after a White House summit on Monday to explain the next steps in the Ukraine-Russia peace process, including how to decide about possible deal-breaking territory swaps. What has emerged is an accelerated process that American and European leaders say will require Putin and Zelenskyy — archnemeses — to reach common ground on several thorny issues. “We'll see what happens there,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday morning. “And then if that works out … I'll go to the trilat and close it up. “I hope President Putin is going to be good, and if he's not, it's going to be a rough situation. And I hope that … President Zelenskyy will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility. ... Maybe they're getting along a little bit better than I thought — otherwise, I wouldn't have set up the two meeting. I would have set up the three, a trilat, but I think they're doing a little bit better,” Trump told the “Fox & Friends” morning show during a 25-minute interview, using shorthand for the diplomatic term “trilateral,” a meeting among three world leaders. A "two meeting," meanwhile, is a bilateral meeting between two world leaders — in this case, Zelenskyy and Putin. Still, Trump acknowledged “there's been tremendous bad blood” between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, adding things might be thawing — just enough: “I wouldn't say they are ever going to be best friends, but they're doing okay, and we're just going to see." After Trump met first with Putin on Friday in Anchorage, then with Zelenskyy and a group of European leaders Monday at the White House, the Nobel Peace Prize-minded American diplomat-in-chief on Tuesday signaled he believes the ball now is in the courts of the two combatants. “I sort of set it up with Putin and Zelenskyy. And, you know, they're the ones that have to call the shots. Where we're 7,000 miles away, in all fairness,” he said on Fox News. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke to the right-leaning cable network late Monday night, contending Trump had put “pressure” on Putin by insisting alliance members increase their respective defense budgets to 5 percent annually of their own gross domestic products. He also applauded Trump for slapping tariffs on India over its purchase of Russian oil, and credited the U.S. leader for deciding — and months of delay — to resume shipments, through NATO countries, of offensive military equipment to Kyiv. Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who earned Trump’s respect during his first White House term, also described the next steps in the peace talks process as being dependent on getting Putin and Zelenskyy in the same room. “We will work on those over the coming days and then have another meeting virtually with this group of leaders. … And then we will work towards this trilateral,” Rutte said. “And he (Trump) was able, in the conversation with President Putin, to have Putin to agree to, first, a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy. So they will now discuss where that meeting will take place in the run-up to the trilateral.” A major topic of the possible Putin-Zelenskyy meeting, then an also possible meeting that Trump would join, would be so-called “land swaps” — even though, at present, what’s on the table seem to be one-way. Putin reportedly sold Trump on Russia taking possession of territories its military currently occupies — and then some. That includes Crimea, Donetsk and mineral-rich Donbas. Zelenskyy and most European leaders had previously rejected such Russian gains. But Rutte and others said “swaps” were not on the Monday agenda at the White House — though during an East Room media availability with Zelensky and the Euros, Trump did mention “the possible exchanges of territory.” Rutte said Monday night that “we have not discussed that today, because everybody is clear … that when it comes to territory, it is the Ukrainian president who has to discuss this in the trilateral, and then probably more conversations after that with Russian leadership.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of a multilateral meeting with European leaders and President Donald Trump in the East Room of the White House on Monday. (Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images) To that end, Trump appeared to have put the full-court press on Zelenskyy during a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office. A White House social media aide posted an official picture of the leaders standing before a map of Ukraine that depicted the extent to which each region was occupied by Russian forces. For instance, the map shows Donetsk as 76 percent occupied by Putin’s forces. Trump on Tuesday morning suggested Russia should be allowed to keep Ukrainian territory it had taken by force, an idea that long has been rejected by Zelenskyy and European leaders. “The Ukrainian soldiers were brave as hell because it's fighting a force that's much, much bigger and clearly much more powerful,” he said of the Russian military, which has been, at times, bolstered by North Korean troops. “And you know, it's not like they've stopped. If you, I assume you've all seen the map, you know, a big chunk of territory is taken, and that territory has been taken. “Now they're talking about Donbas. But Donbas, right now, as you know, is 79 percent owned and controlled by Russia,” Trump added. “So they understand that.” ‘They’ve all had it’ Trump’s comments about the future of Russian-occupied areas raised new questions, as did his comments Monday and Tuesday about what role U.S. force might play in a peacekeeping force eventually positioned inside Ukraine or within striking distance on the continent. Trump on Monday said European troops would heavily “be involved” because “they are the first line of defense because they’re there, they’re Europe. But we’re going to help them out also. We’ll be involved.” That raised questions about the prospect of U.S. military forces stationed along the borders of future and former Ukrainian soils, staring down Russian troops in a throwback to the tensions of the Cold War. On Tuesday, when pressed on not deploying American boots on the ground in Ukraine, he replied: “You have my assurance — I'm president — and I'm just trying to stop people from being killed.” “They're willing to put people on the ground. We're willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you talk about by air, because there's nobody that has the kind of stuff we have,” Trump told Fox. “But I don't think it's going to be a problem.” In a telling assessment, Trump pulled back the curtain on his own thinking: both sides, and the European leaders, seem so tired of the fighting and killing that even a bad deal might be good enough. “But I think if a deal is made, I think Russia has had it. They've all had it, and for a very extended period of time. I don't think there'll be a problem, but there'll be some form of security,” he said, then remarkably showing empathy to a key Russian demand: “It can't be NATO because … that's just not something that would ever, ever happen. He couldn't, they couldn't do that. So who would want that?” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later Tuesday said “the president has said definitively that U.S. boots will not be on the ground in Ukraine.” But one senior Senate Democrat said Trump was merely allowing Putin to “delay and distract to stall for time.” “Ukraine is ready to end the war, but Putin keeps bombing Ukrainian cities, killing more innocent Ukrainians overnight including a young child,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen said in a Monday evening statement. “It is past time for President Trump to finally get tough on Putin and force him to negotiate, not just posture.” The 79-year-old Trump, who has long been against any wars, revealed another motivation for his peace push on Tuesday morning: "I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed. ... I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I really hit the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons."
