Trump calls for ceasefire in Ukraine after end of Assad regime in Syria

Matthew Medsger, Boston Herald on Dec 8, 2024

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The war in Ukraine must end and the shooting stop immediately, said President-elect Donald Trump in a statement Sunday.

Trump, in late night social media postings that came following the apparent demise of President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed regime in Syria, said that now is the time for an end to the war in Ukraine.

“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse,” Trump wrote.

The former president noted the war — which will enter its third year this February — has caused at least 400,000 Ukrainian casualties, and that “close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.”

Al-Assad’s apparent decision to abandon his post and flee the country for Moscow proves that Russia has its hands full in Ukraine, according to Trump.

“Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine,” he said.

Trump’s assertion regarding Ukrainian casualties was later backed up by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who for the first time since the war began acknowledged the vast number of killed and wounded Ukrainian fighters.

“Since the start of the full-scale war, Ukraine has lost 43,000 soldiers killed in action on the battlefield. There have been 370,000 cases of medical assistance for the wounded,” the former comedian shared, noting that of those casualties, “approximately half of the soldiers wounded in action are later returning to the battlefield, and that our data also includes light or repeat injuries.”

“Since September this year, Russia has been losing troops on the battlefield at a ratio of 5-to-1, or even 6-to-1, compared to us. They want to seize more land before global pressure on them becomes unbearable,” Zelenskyy said.

On Trump’s ceasefire proposal, Zelenskyy cautioned that Ukraine needs a “just and robust peace, that Russians will not destroy within a few years.”

The fighting in Ukraine began in 2014, when Putin illegally invaded and annexed Crimea. It continued in a pair of separatist regions in the eight years that followed, but exploded into full-scale conflict in February of 2022.

On Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the U.S. would provide another military aid package to Ukraine, a further nearly $1 billion worth of equipment that comes about a week after a similarly sized aid package was announced.

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