Taoiseach of Ireland Micheál Martin applauded President Donald Trump’s push for peace in Ukraine during their Oval Office meeting Wednesday.
Martin underscored Trump’s efforts to bring about peace in a general sense while thanking him for his hospitality at the start of the meeting.
“I commend you in terms of the work that you’re doing, particularly in terms of the pursuit of peace, which we discussed earlier,” Martin said. “I think that’s going well.”
While fielding questions from the press, Martin spoke about Trump’s “peace initiatives” while drawing on the peace process Ireland went through in the 1990s after decades of The Troubles.
Martin said:
Can I just say… to pay tribute to the President on the peace initiatives, the one thing we’ve learned in Ireland about the peace process… and I recall back in the early ’90s when the first tentative steps to get peace in Ireland, people criticized people like John Hume or people like Albert Reynolds… but they kept going. And when we got that cease fire in ’93, okay, took a number of years to get the comprehensive peace settlement, but again, the guns more or less largely went silent. The war in Ukraine is a devastating war on young people, and I think that very simple, straightforward narrative is to be commended. And we all have children. I mean, we’re shocked at the prospect of young people losing their lives in that number, be they Ukrainian, be they Russian, whatever. Anything we can do to stop the violence, I think, is an extremely positive thing.
Trump responded, saying that “2,500 young people died” in the war last week “while we sit here and talk.”
Trump also expressed optimism that a ceasefire could be reached following Ukraine’s agreement to a proposal set forth by the United States, contingent on Russia agreeing to it.
“I think we have a chance to get it done. So we’ve gotten half of it as a ceasefire, and if we can get Russia to stop, then we have a full ceasefire, and I think it’ll never go back to war,” he said.
Trump said Tuesday he expects to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week.
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