Trump administration ambassador: U.S. against any talk about adding Ukraine to NATO, wants crisis ended through negotiations

MOSCOW. Jan 23 (Interfax) - Americans are very frustrated that a great deal has been said in the last few years about the need to boost military spending and to fight more, but no attempts have been made to end the Ukraine crisis through talks, Ambassador at Large at U.S. President Donald Trump's administration Richard Grenell said.

"Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden have not spoken in more than three and a half years. Now we think that it's outrageous. The American people think that it's outrageous. We should be able to talk to people," Ukrainian media quoted Grenell as saying at the Ukrainian Breakfast 2025 in Davos on Thursday.

There is a huge frustration from Americans that the U.S. is spending" hundreds of billions of dollars", but the leaders are not speaking to each other to try to solve problems, he said.

Trump has been very clear that he wants to solve these problems, Grenell said.

"Talking is a tactic, and you are not going to be able to solve problems peacefully unless you actually have conversations," he said.

The U.S. State Department has been shoved off to the side, he said.

"And we find it pretty shocking that so many foreign ministers in Europe, so many American politicians at the time who didn't just try to stop the crisis [...] And we think that it's amoral to not try to stop conflicts that are being told to us are absolutely inevitable," Grenell said.

If the NATO secretary general starts talking about adding Ukraine to the alliance, this idea will draw opposition within the U.S., he said.

"The American people are the ones that are paying for the defense. You cannot ask the American people to expand and extend the umbrella of NATO when the current members aren't paying their fair share," Grenell said.

"Now that President Trump is in office, I think he's been handed a terrible mess. There are not a lot of great choices. But President Trump has already made clear that he's going to pressure both sides to end this," he said.