PM US President Donald Trump added one to his latest list of wars he claims to have stopped — oscillating between the numbers six and seven yet again — as he spoke to reporters at the White House on Monday.
He said four of these wars he stopped using trade tariffs as leverage. His list has mostly remained at six so far, including the claim that he “stopped potential nuclear war” between India and Pakistan in May — a claim India has denied but Trump has reiterated over two dozen times.
On Monday, he added to the list, yet again, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that he is currently mediating to resolve, but then he moved from “stopped” to “settled”.
“I thought that of the seven that we settled, this was going to be the easiest, but you never what happens in a war,” he said in response to a question about his recent mediation meetings.
He has met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month in quick succession, and said, “I think we will have a deal soon.”
Trump blamed “bombs being loaded up in Kyiv (Ukraine’s capital) and someplace” as a hindrance to “every time we are close to a deal”.
He praised Putin for coming to Alaska in the US, and termed his visit for talks “a big statement that he wants to end [the war]”.
To questions about NATO and funding Ukraine in its war efforts, Trump criticised his predecessor Joe Biden for giving “billions of dollars” to Ukraine. He said the US now gives no money to Ukraine.
“We sell weapons to NATO,” he said, stressing that the security grouping pays the US “in full” and can then gives the missiles and other ammunition to Ukraine. “But I don’t want to make any money from the war,” he added. He spoke also about how he sells more superior weapons to NATO than Joe Biden’s administration did.
Trump’s mediation has so far not made visible progress, analysts say, but JD Vance, his deputy, has recently said that negotiations would take time.
How India ends up in middle of claims
India, meanwhile, finds itself at the centre of this rhetoric too.
US officials, including Vance, have claimed that the 25+25% tariffs on India — billed as “penalty” for buying Russian oil — were “aggressive economic leverage” that got Putin to the table.
The Modi government in India, meanwhile, is responding both with new domestic pledges and a diplomatic realignment.
PM Modi on Monday reiterated that Indians must buy “swadeshi” (indigenous) goods. He is set to visit China soon as part of a thaw in relations were all but frozen over historical and newer border disputes. That visit will come by the end of this month, before which the additional 25% tariffs, the “penalty”, will kick in.
Which wars is he counting? 6 he mentions repeatedly
As for Trump’s and his office’s claims about stopping wars — seen as part of his consistently desperate bid for a Nobel Peace Prize — he counts the landmark agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
A second is the end to the most recent Israel-Iran conflict, in June of this year. He endorsed the Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, and claimed his ultimatum to Iran to “make a deal or face more brutal attacks” worked.
The Egypt-Ethiopia dispute over the Nile river is another one on his list, though both countries have disputed his claims.
He also announced a peace treaty between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
At number five, in no particular order, is the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia. He said the truce was brokered with his phone call. Later, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet wrote a “nomination” letter for Trump to the committee that gives the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, whom Trump hosted for lunch soon after India’s retaliatory strikes for an attack in J&K’s Pahalgam, has also made such a “nomination”.
The lunch and mutual praise came after Munir backed Trump’s claim that he stopped a “potential nuclear war” between India and Pakistan. That makes it six as he remains unfazed by India’s denials.
Trump had claimed before taking up the presidency in January that he would end the war in Gaza, but he has not been able to prevail over Israel on that.