Karoline Leavitt: 'The President Is Optimistic But Realistic' About Ending Russia-Ukraine War

At a White House press briefing for new media, Karoline Leavitt discussed efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine War.

Transcript

00:00right away. Sure, go ahead. Yeah, so the president has really wanted to end the war in Ukraine for a

00:07long time now, and has been working on that in the first hundred days. We've seen President

00:12Zelensky come here, as well as the president meeting with President Zelensky just in the last

00:17couple of days. I'm wondering where those talks stand, and if the president is optimistic that

00:22that conflict is going to wrap up shortly. The president is optimistic, yet realistic,

00:27about the incredibly complicated and unfortunate situation happening with Ukraine and Russia.

00:35First of all, this is Biden's war. It would have never started if President Trump were in office.

00:41There is a reason that Putin did not invade Ukraine when President Trump was in the Oval Office,

00:47and it's because, again, President Trump leveraged the power of the United States to warn Putin not

00:53to do it. And the president has spoken about that and those direct warnings to the Kremlin that he

00:58gave in his first term. Then we had a mentally incompetent president in Joe Biden, who didn't

01:03even know what day it is, never mind knew how to prevent war. And the entire world took advantage

01:08of that and took advantage of America's lackluster leadership abroad. And so we've had this terrible

01:15war. The president talks about it all the time. He's briefed on it constantly. There are men dying on the

01:21front lines of this. An entire generation is being wiped out. And enough is enough. The president has

01:27made it very clear he wants to see this end at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. He has

01:33spoken directly to both sides of this war. He most recently met with President Zelensky at the Vatican

01:38when he attended the funeral of Pope Francis. And he remains optimistic that both sides will come

01:44together to negotiate peace. There are a lot of complexities on both sides of this war. But so he's

01:50realistic about that. But he is optimistic that we are moving in the right direction. And if you just

01:55take a step back and look at where we are now, where you have concessions from both sides publicly,

02:01where you have ceasefire proposals from both sides, presidents made it clear he wants a permanent

02:06ceasefire first. But you actually have the United States talking to Russia, you have the United States

02:10talking to the Ukrainians on a daily basis, communicating with both sides. Look at that compared to where we

02:17were when we came into office, where neither side was talking. There was just one approach to ending

02:23this war. No one was really talking about a peace deal. We were just talking about continuing to send

02:29blank checks to continue funding the fighting and the killing. This war has been a meat grinder. Young men

02:34are dying. Women and children are dying as a collateral result of the military conflict. And the

02:40president wants to see it end as quickly and soon as possible. And I can tell you watching firsthand,

02:46he has exuded a tremendous amount of effort into this war. He's getting frustrated with the amount

02:52of effort this has taken. And he's made that clear to both sides. But he remains optimistic that we can get

02:57this done. Brendan.

02:59I was wondering...