Trump says Ukraine war must be resolved, Syria to take care of itself

By Nur Asena Erturk

After more than a thousand days of the Russian war on Ukraine, US President-elect Donald Trump said the war in Ukraine must be resolved, according to media reports.

Trump paid a visit to Paris to attend the reopening ceremony of the Notre Dame Cathedral on Saturday, where he gave an exclusive interview with the French weekly Paris Match.

The US president-elect said he had “a good meeting” with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

He noted that there were many crises in the world and that a new one emerged in Syria.

“Syria will have to take care of itself. We are not involved in Syria,” Trump said. “I think we have to solve the Ukraine problem with Russia. Both those countries are losing numbers that nobody can believe. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are being killed,” he added.

The Middle East is also “a big priority,” according to Trump.

“But I think that the Middle East is a less difficult situation than Ukraine with Russia,” he stressed.

Ahead of the ceremony marking the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral after five years, a first tripartite meeting was held on Saturday at the Elysee Palace in Paris involving French President Emmanuel Macron, Zelenskyy, and Trump.

The meeting marked the first face-to-face discussion between Zelenskyy and Trump since the latter’s election victory, following a phone call on Nov. 6.

The reopening of Notre Dame marks a significant achievement in the long restoration process, which included extensive cleaning of the cathedral’s stonework and structural repairs in the wake of the April 2019 fire, which investigators said was probably due to an accident.