Donald Trump passing the buck to Pope Leo XIV for conducting Ukraine war peace talks

Monday’s tow hour conversation with Putin failed to evolve anything concrete on truce

- BY T N ASHOK

US President Donald Trump has virtually called off his peacemaking efforts with Ukraine and Russia to break their ongoing conflict after his two-hour talk on Monday with so-called buddy Russian President Vladimir Putin ended in a no entry zone.

Now the Vatican has entered the scene to host the peace talks between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders.

One does not know if President Trump asked the Chicago born Pope Leo XIV for help to bail him out and host the talks so that both leaders would listen to him. But VP JD Vance indeed met the new pope from Chicago Leo XIV and explained the global situation including Ukraine.

Trump spoke with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders in separate calls Monday, in an attempt to stop the “bloodbath” of the war in Ukraine.

But the president's peace initiative ended inconclusive leaving him frustrated. Russia and Ukraine would now hold direct talks on a ceasefire “immediately,” Trump said afterward in a post on his social network Truth Social.

However, it was unclear what form those talks would take or when they would happen. The Vatican, Trump said, has expressed interest in hosting the negotiations. “The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” he said. Trump's call with Putin lasted more than two hours and “was very informative and very open,” Putin told Russian state media.