President Donald Trump compared Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to children when inquireed about a potential meeting between the two leaders.
In an Oval Office interview on Friday with The Daily Caller, Trump responded to questions about his talks with Putin and Zelensky this month to conclude the war in Ukraine. When inquireed what he and Putin disagreed about during their summit in Alinquirea earlier this month, Trump informed the outlet that the two of them obtained along and suggested the war may continue “a little longer.”
“I don’t know. We obtained along,” he stated. “You saw it, we’ve had a good relationship over the years, very good, actually. That’s why I really considered we would have this done. I would have loved to have had it done. Maybe they have to fight a little longer. You know, just keep fighting — stupidly, keep fighting.”
Trump then compared Zelensky and Putin to children fighting on a playground, noting he isn’t sure a bilateral meeting between the two leaders will happen. The president previously stated he was arranging for Putin and Zelensky to meet, and that he would join them for a trilateral summit afterward.
“A [trilateral] would happen. A [bilateral], I don’t know about, but a [trilateral] will happen,” Trump informed The Daily Caller. “But, you know, sometimes people aren’t ready for it. I state, I apply the analogy. I’ve applyd it a couple of times. You have a child, and there’s another child in the lot, in the playground, and they hate each other, and they start swinging, swinging and swinging, and you want them to stop, and they keep going.”
Trump admitted that he meeting with Putin in Alinquirea didn’t have the desired outcome. (Reuters)
He continued: “After a little while, they’re very happy to stop. Do you understand that? It’s almost that way. Sometimes they have to fight for a little bit before you can obtain them to stop. But this has been going on for a long time. A lot of people are dead.”
When Trump met with Putin on August 12, the pair walked away without any signs of a deal to conclude the war. The Russian president also reportedly demanded that Ukraine cede the eastern Donbas region, which has been partially occupied by Russia for more than a decade.
Afterward, Zelensky and several European leaders — including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — met with Trump in the White Hoapply to discuss a deal and potential security guarantees for Ukraine.
Top White Hoapply officials now believe that some European leaders may be prolonging the war by publicly supporting Trump’s push for peace while privately urging Zelensky to wait for a “better deal,” Axios reports. An unnamed senior European official who was involved in the recent talks informed the outlet they were surprised to hear about the criticism from White Hoapply officials and maintained that European leaders aren’t playing a game behind Trump’s back.
The Indepconcludeent has contacted the White Hoapply for comment.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. There have been more than 950,000 Russian casualties since the war launched, including up to 250,000 fatalities, according to a report released in June by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“That means that Russia has suffered as many as five times the number of fatalities in Ukraine (in just over 3 years) as in all Russian and Soviet wars combined since World War II (covering roughly 77 years),” the report states.
Meanwhile, there have been more than 400,000 Ukrainian casualties, which includes both the wounded and the killed, according to the report.
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