President Trump says he has had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine, telling the New York Post that the two leaders have spoken and he’d “better not say” how many times.
Trump, who during his presidential campaign vowed to end the Russian-Ukraine war quickly, expressed sorrow over the loss of life in the war and compared the young men dying since Russia invaded its neighbor nearly three years ago to his own sons.
“All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, 2 million of them — and for no reason,” Trump told the Post during an interview the outlet received on Air Force One.
Joined by his national security adviser Michael Waltz in the study on the presidential plane, Trump said: “Let’s get these meetings going. They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”
Trump offered few details in the interview with the Post on exactly what he and Putin had shared in their conversations, or whether Putin had offered any concrete commitments.
Asked how many times the two had spoken, the Post reported Trump said: “I’d better not say.”
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But he added that Putin wanted to end the war in Ukraine and said the Kremlin leader “does care” about the killing.
“He wants to see people stop dying,” Trump said, per the Post.
Trump also briefly discussed the topics of Israel and Iran during the interview.
He told the New York tabloid that he “would like a deal done with Iran on nonnuclear” and that he would prefer a negotiated deal to “bombing the hell out of it. … They don’t want to die. Nobody wants to die.”
If there was a deal with Iran, he said, “Israel wouldn’t bomb them.”
But as with his conversations about Putin, Trump offered few details about any talks he had had or any specifics of his plans for Iran.
“In a way, I don’t like telling you what I’m going to tell them. You know, it’s not nice,” he told the Post.
Trump met last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited Washington and also met with leading figures in Congress.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. It had previously occupied the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Trump has long criticized the war and his predecessor’s handling of it. The U.S. offered staunch support for Ukraine during much of the Biden administration’s term, though GOP opposition to that support has been building, and Republicans now control both chambers of Congress.
