Trump predicts deal with Russia that "could encompass all of Europe"

Donald Trump on Thursday predicted an imminent "very big" deal with Russia on Ukraine, adding that the understanding in question "could encompass all of Europe". The US president was speaking to journalists, according to Agence France-Presse.

Trump said he had met Kirill Dmitriev, the envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, invited to the White House on Thursday by First Lady Melania Trump. He added that he had not held talks with the Ukrainian delegation, also invited by his wife to an event celebrating the ceasefire she supervised at Olechky, in southern Ukraine. "It will be a big deal and it will concern more than Ukraine. It will be very big. It will encompass more than Ukraine and I would even say it could encompass all of Europe," Donald Trump said. "It will be a big and beautiful deal and everyone will be delighted," he said.

The same day, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced in a letter to European Council President António Costa the "disorderly" approach of European countries in the negotiations on Ukraine, summoning the European Union to say who speaks on its behalf, according to AFP. "By giving the image of a Europe advancing in dispersed order, we do nothing other than serve the interests of those who want this war to continue," she wrote.

Donald Trump's remark comes two days after he accepted his defeat in the midterm elections, a setback that led some observers to question America's room for manoeuvre, as recounted in our article on Trump's defeat redrawing the cards of US foreign policy. At the end of October, Melania Trump had already called for a lasting ceasefire in Ukraine.