US President Donald Trump said Thursday that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia \u201cfight for a while\u201d before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.<\/p>\n
In an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump likened the war in Ukraine \u2013 which Russia invaded in early 2022 \u2013 to a fight between two young children who hated each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you\u2019re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,\u201d Trump said. He added that he had relayed that analogy to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their phone conversation on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Asked about Trump\u2019s comments as the two leaders sat next to each other, Merz stressed that both he and Trump agreed \u201con this war and how terrible this war is going on\u201d, pointing to the US president as the \u201ckey person in the world\u201d who would be able to stop the bloodshed.<\/p>\n
But Merz also emphasised that Germany \u201cwas on the side of Ukraine\u201d and that Kyiv was attacking only military targets, not Russian civilians.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to get them stronger,\u201d Merz said of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s meeting marked the first time that the two leaders sat down in person. After exchanging pleasantries \u2013 Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the US president\u2019s grandfather Friedrich Trump, who immigrated from Germany \u2013 the two leaders were to discuss issues such as Ukraine, trade and Nato spending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump said Thursday that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia \u201cfight for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[8385,13402,2182,2574,2183,11071,2000,299,1699,1945,1824,10546,2184,2821,332,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-161018","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-afd","9":"tag-angela-merkel","10":"tag-audi","11":"tag-berlin","12":"tag-bmw","13":"tag-bundeswehr","14":"tag-eu","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european-union","17":"tag-friedrich-merz","18":"tag-germany","19":"tag-kyiv","20":"tag-mercedes-benz","21":"tag-nato","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114632432892853672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}