US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, even as Germany’s new chancellor appealed to him as the “key person in the world” who could halt the bloodshed by pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the US president likened the war in Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022, to a fight between two children who hate each other.
Trump said that with children, “sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” adding that he relayed the analogy to Putin in a call this week.
Photo: Bloomberg
“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,” Trump said.
The comments were a detour from Trump’s often-stated appeals to stop the violence in Ukraine — and he again denounced the bloodshed Thursday even as he floated the possibility that the two countries should continue the war for a time.
Merz sidestepped Trump’s assertions and said that the US and Germany both agree on “how terrible this war is,” while making sure to lay blame squarely on Putin for the violence and make the point that Germany was siding with Ukraine.
“We are both looking for ways to stop it very soon,” Merz said. “I told the president before we came in that he is the key person in the world who can really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.”
Thursday’s meeting was the first time the two leaders sat down in person, and Merz left the public portion unscathed as he successfully avoided the kind of made-for-TV confrontation in the Oval Office that befell other world leaders such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the US president’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, who emigrated to the US from Kallstadt, Germany, and Trump called the chancellor a “very good man to deal with.”
“He’s difficult, I would say? Can I say that? It’s a positive. You wouldn’t want me to say you’re easy, right?” Trump said, gently ribbing Merz. “He’s a very great representative of Germany.”
Merz told German reporters after the White House meeting that he had invited Trump to visit Germany, “his home country,” and added that the two leaders “get along well on the personal level.”
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