Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected President Donald Trump’s push to have the next round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks at the Vatican – an idea the president has floated since the newly appointed American pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, suggested it earlier this month.
Special Envoy Keith Kellogg confirmed the news while speaking on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning when he said, “The Russians didn’t want to go there” and suggested that instead the talks could next be held in Geneva.
Though it remains unclear when another round of talks will be held as Russia has yet to agree to the U.S.’s peace proposal and its foreign ministry on Tuesday claimed it was still working on its memorandum of terms.
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Trump on Tuesday took to social media to issue a warning to Putin and said he’s “playing with fire.”
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” he wrote on Truth Social. “He’s playing with fire!”
Similarly, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of “playing games” after it carried out the largest drone strike ever in the three-year-long war in a Sunday attack in which Russia launched 335 drones and nine cruise missiles at civilian targets.
The attack prompted Trump to condemn Putin as “crazy” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump said Sunday. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY!
He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” he added.
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Trump took it one step further and warned Putin that should he attempt to take “all of Ukraine…it will lead to the downfall of Russia.”
The Kremlin clapped back at Trump and accused him of being “emotional.”
When asked about the president’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process.
“This is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions,” he added, according to a Reuters report.
But Trump didn’t limit his verbal attack to Putin in his social media post and claimed Zelenskyy was “doing his country no favors by talking the way he does.”
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” he added, though it is unclear what Zelenskyy said that prompted this reaction.
