Trump threatens to ‘take a pass’ and abandon peace deal efforts in Ukraine. ‘We’re just gonna say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people.’

President Donald Trump has echoed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s warning that America is poised to abandon its diplomatic efforts in Ukraine if Moscow and Kyiv can’t show progress in the near future. “There’s no specific number of days, but we want to get it done,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “If for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just gonna say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re gonna just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

At the same time, Trump said he believes both Russia and Ukraine want the war to end. He expressed confidence that there’s a “really good chance” of reaching an agreement and rejected the idea that Moscow is “playing games” with him.

Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Paris that President Trump is perhaps days from abandoning his administration’s efforts to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. “We're not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio told reporters in France, as reported by Reuters.