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Europe needs to do more to reach settlement in Ukraine — White House

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted that Vladimir Zelensky was not moving toward peace in Ukraine, but in the opposite direction

WASHINGTON, April 23. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump's position is that Europe needs to do more to achieve a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

"[US] President [Donald Trump] has always maintained that Europe always needs to do more, whether it's in the effort to end this war in Russia and Ukraine, whether it is in terms of their spending when it comes to NATO and their own defense spending as well," the spokeswoman said. "He's made that clear to them in private and also in public. You've seen it when we've had many different European leaders coming," Leavitt emphasized, referring to Trump and his EU counterparts.

Trump wrote earlier Wednesday on his Truth Social page that Zelensky's comments that Ukraine would not recognize Crimea as Russian were bad for negotiations "in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Obama and is not even a point of discussion." For her part, Leavitt noted that Zelensky was not moving toward peace in Ukraine, but in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told France’s Le Point in an interview that "Europe wants war, not negotiations" on a settlement in Ukraine.

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Ukraine crisis Ukraine United States

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