WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday that the Donbas region of Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands, to end a war between the two countries.
“Let it be cut the way it is,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “It’s cut up right now,” adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now.”
“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line — go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”
Ukrainian drones struck a Russian gas processing plant, starting a fire that caused the plant to suspect its intake of gas from Kazakhstan.
In recent months, Ukraine has rampus its attacks on Russian energy facilities. Ukraine has said that these energy facilities fuel Russia’s war effort.
Ukraine has ramped up attacks in recent months on Russian energy facilities it says both fund and directly fuel Russia’s war effort.
During a Fox News interview last week, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “going to take something” in regards to ending the war in Ukraine.
“They fought and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property,” Trump said. “We’re the only nation that goes in, wins a war and then leaves.”
This interiew was conducted before Trump spoke to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
After his phone call with Putin, Trump has announced that he plans to meet with him in Budapest, reiterating that Ukrain will need to give up terriroty by having the fighting “stop at the lines where they are,” while talking to reporters on Air Force One Sunday night.
“The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that,’” he said. “You know, there are so many different permutations.”
Trump did not give Zelenskyy the Tomahwak missiles that he was hoping for during their meeting at the White House on Friday.
According to Ukraine, Russia has mofidied some of their aerial bombs to strike civilians deeper in Ukraine.
Local authorities in Kharkiv said Russia struck a residential neighborhood using a new rocket-powered aerial bomb for the first time.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement early Sunday that its air defense forces had shot down 45 Ukrainian drones during the night, including 12 over the Samara region, one over the Orenburg region and 11 over the Saratov region neighboring Samara.
In turn, Ukraine’s air force reported Sunday that Russia during the night launched 62 drones into Ukrainian territory. It said 40 of these were shot down, or veered off course due to electronic jamming.
Editor’s Note: The Associated Press contributed to this story.