U.S. President Donald Trump said on June 5 that it might be best not to intervene in Russia’s war against Ukraine for now, speaking during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House.
The U.S. president, who has repeatedly claimed he alone can resolve the war, appeared to walk back that promise amid stalled negotiations, rising casualties from Russian drone strikes, and no signs of compromise from either side.
Kyiv has repeatedly urged Russia to accept a Western-backed 30-day ceasefire as the first step toward a broader peace deal — a move that Moscow again rejected during a recent round of negotiations in Istanbul on June 2.
"Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump said. “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."
Trump said he used the same comparison during a 75-minute call with Russian President Vladimir Putin the day before, casting himself not as a direct participant but as a referee observing the conflict.
"You see it in hockey. You see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds," he said. "Let them go for a little while before you pull them apart."
Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on Russia if he does not see progress in peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow. While he did not name a specific date, he added, "Yes, it's in my brain the deadline."
Calling Ukraine "the apple of Putin’s eye," Trump claimed the Russian leader wants to take control of the entire country. Following a reported Ukrainian drone strike on Russian aircraft, Trump said Putin now plans to retaliate.
Ukraine on June 1 launched a game-changing drone attack on four key Russian military airfields, damaging 41 planes, including heavy bombers and rare A-50 spy planes. Kyiv has claimed it had disabled 34% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet in what is seen as one of the most daring operations during the full-scale war.
The operation, dubbed Spiderweb, took 18 months to plan and was overseen directly by President Volodymyr Zelensky and carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The SBU said 117 drones, launched from concealed trucks positioned across Russian territory, simultaneously struck airfields in at least four regions — including sites thousands of kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
"They went deep into Russia and (Putin) actually told me we have no choice but to attack based on that, and it's probably not going to be pretty," Trump said. "I don't like it, I said don't do it, you shouldn't do it, you should stop it," he added.
Olena Goncharova
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