NEW YORK, February 20. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump is determined to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end, his National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said.
"Look, the president is ready to drive this war to an end. He has made that clear over and over again," he said. Waltz added that the previous US administration "didn't even really try" to settle the conflict, and now "President Trump is doing what he should as a leader and pushing hard diplomacy with strength and leadership." "No one should be surprised about that," he said.
Waltz said that the US has "done a lot, a lot for the security of Ukraine," adding that Washington’s request to strike a deal on rare earths as a way to recoup aid provided to Kiev is fair. "To say that we're going to change the nature of our aid going forward is, I don't think should offend anyone," he said.
In early February, Trump said that Washington was interested in obtaining rare earth metals from Ukraine, while Vladimir Zelensky expressed readiness to strike a deal and suggested that the outcome of the negotiations could be fixed at the Munich Security Conference that took place on February 14-16. However, on February 14 in Munich, Ukraine rejected the US administration's plan to provide assistance to Ukraine in exchange for granting Washington the right to 50% of Ukrainian rare earth metals. Zelensky said there were no security guarantees in the proposed agreement. Kiev said it was working on a counter-proposal.