The Kremlin called its war on Ukraine “an existential issue” in response to remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump comparing the situation to two children fighting in a park.
Trump had drawn the analogy during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Freidrich Merz, and said sometimes you are better off letting children fight for a while before pulling them apart.
Trump is trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, but has grown increasingly frustrated with the slow progress towards ending the fighting, and said he is willing to walk away if he determines that no deal can be made.
“Here, of course, the U.S. president may have his own point of view on what is happening,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, said at a press briefing on Friday morning, Interfax reported.
“For us, this is an existential issue, it is a matter of our national interests, a question of our security, the future of us and our children, the future of our country,” Peskov said, in remarks translated from Russian.
Trump’s Path on Ukraine Unclear
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with the German Chancellor in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2025.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with the German Chancellor in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on June 5, 2025.
MICHAEL KAPPELER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
It is not clear what path Trump will choose if he decides to abandon brokering the peace process and leave the Ukraine issue to European allies to resolve.
Tougher sanctions on Russia are one option favored by Republican senators, and Kyiv has said this is the kind of pressure Moscow needs to force it to make peace, but Trump could also pull back from providing Ukraine with military aid.
“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday as he sat with Merz.
“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.”
Russia, Ukraine Fight Amid Talks
Russia and Ukraine have held their first direct talks in more than three years in recent weeks. Two sets of negotiations have taken place so far.
The talks took place in Istanbul, and more are due, but have yielded only a mass exchange of prisoners and the swapping of memoranda on ceasefire demands, with each side dismissing the other’s terms.
Meanwhile, the fighting continues. Ukraine said it hit 41 aircraft at bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1, including a number of strategic bombers, in its drone-led Operation Spiderweb, a major psychological and material blow to Moscow.
In response, Russia has launched a massive drone and missile strike on Ukrainian cities overnight into June 6. The Ukrainian air force said the attack on six Ukrainian regions used more than 400 drones and over 40 ballistic missiles. Several people were killed.