EVIAN, France, June 17 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he has had good talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in France.
Zelenskiy and his European allies came to this week’s G7 summit in the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains hoping to impress upon Trump that Ukraine’s battlefield fortunes had improved thanks to its drone incursions deep into Russia.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the meeting, Trump did not want to say if he thought Putin was more responsible for the conflict in Ukraine. “Well, I don’t want to comment on that, because I’m trying to get it settled, and that doesn’t make it easy.”
Trump said Ukraine’s wish to build U.S. missiles in Europe would be considered.
“They would like to be able to do that. We’ll take a look at it,” he said.
The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday did not publish an extension of its waiver of sanctions on Russian seaborne oil that ran out at midnight, but Trump administration officials did not immediately say whether it meant sanctions on Russian oil had been re-imposed.
Asked if Russian sanctions would be re-imposed, Trump told reporters: “We are looking at that, we’re seeing how far the price of oil comes down, it’s, it’s really tumbling.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, Katharine Jackson and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Michelle Nichols )
