President Trump on Thursday suggested that Russia and Ukraine should maybe “fight for a little while” as the recent efforts for a peace deal appear to be making little progress.
Trump made the comments to reporters in the Oval Office while hosting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and compared the war in Ukraine to a fight between children.
“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” he said. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”
Trump said he made the analogy in his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week. “I said, ‘President, maybe you’re going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot,’ because both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they’re able to be pulled apart,” he said.
After the call with Putin on Wednesday, Trump said that the Russian leader told him Moscow would have to respond to the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian airfields, and said there would likely not be “immediate peace.”
In his remarks on Thursday, Trump suggested he could sanction both Russia and Ukraine if a peace deal isn’t reached. “When I see the moment where it’s not going to stop … we’ll be very, very tough,” he said. “And it could be on both countries, to be honest. It takes two to tango.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been demanding new US sanctions on Russia and made the call again on Thursday. “We do count on strong steps. That’s what’s in short supply right now. And this is what can make even the sleazebags in Moscow realize they can’t pull the war off,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“This is why we need new and sufficient sanctions, first and foremost from the United States. This is why we need clear political pressure for diplomacy to be effective,” the Ukrainian leader added.
In the meantime, the US continues to provide military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine to fuel the proxy war. Ukraine has been stepping up attacks on Russian territory, which always risks a major escalation.
