Defence minister Alistair Carns says only the Ukrainians should decide when “they want to move towards peace” and “no one should be putting pressure on them to do so”. This comes after US president-elect Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr seemingly taunted President Zelenskyy with a social media post saying “you're 38 days from losing your allowance". Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, the first thing we go think about is what message does any end state in Ukraine
00:04send to other people around the world? And then secondly, it's down to Ukrainians to decide
00:08when they want to do indeed, or they want to move towards peace. The Ukrainians are the country
00:13that's been invaded by Putin. Putin is the only individual responsible for that. And I think it's
00:17down to Ukrainians to decide on when they want to move towards a deal and no one else should be
00:22putting pressure on them to do so. I think the US is a key player. It's also a deeply strategic
00:27player. And it recognises that the message, any peace deal that necessarily didn't favour Ukraine
00:33sends to the rest of the world is not the right one. So I'm pretty confident between us, the US,
00:38our European allies, that we will work with Ukraine to work towards a solution. I've worked
00:43with the US military for the last 24 years of my career, shoulder to shoulder, complete
00:47interoperability. We have a very strong relationship with the Americans. And that's not just in the
00:52military sector, it's across all different sectors of government. And I think that will continue
00:55under Trump. Trump will want deals, but he also understands the requirement for friendships,
01:01allies and partners. And we're his number one partner in the world. So I think it'll be fine
01:05as we move forward.