For months, US President Donald Trump has expressed different degrees of optimism that he – and only he – will be able to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
But slow progress, increasingly lethal drone attacks, and inflexible positions in negotiations seem to have charged their price.
On Thursday, Trump used a surprising analogy to admit that the war was far from the end and that at that time he did not consider it appropriate to intervene.
“Sometimes you see two children fighting like crazy,” Trump said at the Oval Hall, with his German homologist Friedrich Merz watching silently. “They hate each other and are fighting in a park, and you try to separate them. They don’t want to be separated. Sometimes it’s better to let them fight for a while and then separate them.”
In this comparison-that Trump said he presented directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin during his Wednesday-Trump acts not as a mediator, but as an referee leaving an altercation unfolds.
“You see this in hockey. You see this in sports. The referees let it continue for a few seconds,” he said. “Let them continue for a while before separating.”
Trump’s evolution – to promise to end the war in one day to compare the sides in conflict to children allowed to fight on a hockey track – has been frustrating for him.
He has hesitated to apply new sanctions to Moscow, afraid of further putin from the negotiating table. Nor did it approve of new military aid to Ukraine, hoping that a quick end to war means that it will not be necessary.
The deadline he offered last week to determine Putin’s seriousness in wanting an end to war-“two weeks”-has not been repeated since, and there seems to be little expectation that he takes some attitude when the self-titled deadline arrives on Monday.
Its position will be tested in the coming weeks, when Trump embarks on a series of global dome where he will undergo pressure from US allies to adopt a firmer position.
It is likely that he personally finds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky NA, scheduled for mid -June.
Over the past three years, the conference has been active as a kind of director committee for Western support to Ukraine, with Zelensky participating as a guest to reinforce his requests for help.
This year’s conference promises to be very different. Trump’s advisers say there is little expectation that he agrees with new sanctions against Russia during his stay in Alberta.
An NATO dome a few weeks later will also put American support to Ukraine under the spotlight.
Alliance leaders planned a brief and strongly focused dome focused on increasing spending on defending the members, hoping to avoid any open hostility of an American president who has already questioned the importance of the group.
Still, despite all the preparations that the hosts of both summits have made to please Trump, their current position on Ukraine can raise existential issues for leaders eager for encouraging attempts to negotiate a ceasefire.
Trump’s posture adopted this Thursday may not be his final position. A few moments after his comparison of “letting it fight for a while,” he insisted it was “in favor of stopping the deaths.”
However, his comments reflected a new degree of resignation regarding the prospects of ending the war, and a distance from the conflict he once promised to resolve.
“They fight, fight, fight,” he said. “Sometimes you let them fight for a while.”
The tone was similar to the way he described his connection with Putin on Wednesday, when he reported the Russian leader’s determination that he would have to retaliate to the weekend.
Trump did not say encouraged Putin to calibrate his answer. Nor did it offer any particular view of Ukraine’s actions.
The visitor at the Oval Hall on Thursday sought to encourage a more confident perspective. Merz quoted his birthday this day of D -Day, the invasion of Normandy – a turning point in World War II – as an example of “when Americans once ended up with a war in Europe.”
“It was not a pleasant day for you,” he joked, referring to the defeat of the German Nazis.
Merz continued, however, emphasizing that American intervention represented “the liberation of my country from the Nazi dictatorship” which has parallels with the current war.
“We know what we owe to you,” he said. “But this is why I am saying that America is, again, in a very strong position to do something in this war and end this conflict.”
Trump did not seem particularly moved. He avoided promising new sanctions against Russia – something that European leaders had been pressing for weeks – saying only that he would know when it was the right time, but that this day had not yet arrived.
He even suggested that he would be willing to apply new punitive measures against Ukraine if the war is not over.
“We will be very, very, very hard, and that can be with both countries, to be honest,” said Trump. “You know, you need two to dance the tango.”
