President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Group of Seven summit in France on Tuesday and expressed exasperation as Russia’s war in Ukraine crept back into Washington’s focus with no end in sight.
“It’s sort of the same thing,” Trump told reporters at the summit. “They just keep going fighting, losing soldiers. They lose so many soldiers.”
“Not since World War II has anything like this happened,” Trump said, before invoking his exaggerated claims as a global peacemaker.
“I settled eight wars,” he said. “This was the one I told you was going to be the easiest to settle, but they just, there’s a lot of dislike between the two leaders.”
During his campaign, Trump said he would end the war within 24 hours. In France on Tuesday, he voiced unhappiness with the number of deaths but said that the United States is ultimately not affected.
“We have nothing do with it,” he said. “We sell weapons to them. … The European Union pays us full price for weapons. … This has no impact on us other than we sell weapons. We’re thousands of miles away.”
For four months, the conflict largely dropped off the White House agenda as Trump and his team focused on their own war against Iran.
Trump meetings with Zelensky on Tuesday followed a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday. Trump urged Putin to make a deal but said there was little sign of one. “I don’t like to see 25,000 young people die every month. They go to this front and get blown up.”
He added, “The whole thing is ridiculous.”
Zelensky, who attended the summit at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron, is hoping to reengage Trump, and European leaders have urged the president to break the impasse by hosting direct talks between Zelensky and Putin in the United States.
Ukraine officially opened negotiations with Brussels this week over its bid for European Union membership. That step marks the start of a long and complex path in Ukraine’s ambition to join the E.U., a process that Kyiv has urged the bloc to fast-track.
Zelensky is expected to join leaders of the E.U.’s 27 nations at a summit in Brussels on Thursday.
Since U.S.-led negotiations to end the Ukraine war fell by the wayside in recent months, Zelensky has been pushing to revive talks with a more prominent role for his European backers, led by France, Germany and Britain.
Some European nations have conveyed that they are willing to engage with Moscow in negotiations, while also warning of new Russia sanctions and sending military aid to Ukraine.
At the summit, Zelensky also briefed G-7 leaders on the damage to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra church complex, one of the holiest sites in Eastern Orthodoxy, which caught fire last week following a Russian airstrike, according to local officials.
The briefing came amid a broader escalation in the war. Ukraine has knocked out key Russian energy facilities, causing fuel shortages across multiple regions, while Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities have endured some of the war’s deadliest missile and drone strikes.
The United Nations reported last week that at least 274 civilians were killed and nearly 1,800 injured in Ukraine in May, more than in any month since April 2022.
Zelensky promised retaliation after visiting the church complex Monday. On Tuesday, Moscow officials reported shooting down dozens of Ukrainian drones approaching the capital. Ukraine also hit a key oil refinery in Kapotnya in the Moscow region, setting of a major fire.
The extent of the damage was unclear, but the facility supplies up to 40 percent of the capital’s gasoline needs and about 50 percent of its diesel and could compound fuel shortages already affecting multiple Russian regions.
Several of Russia’s largest gas stations are rationing fuel sales following months of sustained damage to major refineries that process crude oil, local media reported Tuesday.
Zelensky is also hoping to step up pressure on Putin to hold direct, face-to-face talks, which have not occurred since Russia’s invasion began in 2022.
Putin and other senior Russian officials, however, have dismissed such talks as pointless unless Zelensky is prepared to sign a final deal meeting Russia’s maximalist demands. They have also invited him to Moscow, which Zelensky has rejected, accusing Russia of “playing games” and insisting that any meeting take place in a neutral country.
During their phone call Sunday, Putin congratulated Trump on his 80th birthday, according to the Kremlin.
Trump called for an end to the war in Ukraine, and the two leaders agreed that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would visit Russia again in the near future.
Putin had repeatedly offered help mediating between the United States and Iran given the close cooperation Moscow forged with Tehran in recent years, but Trump rebuffed those offers, telling Putin he should focus on resolving his own war.
The recent deal to end the war against Iran could hinder Russia’s efforts to shore up its wartime budget, which has partly benefited from disruptions to Middle Eastern fuel supplies. In March, the Trump administration temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil exports seeking to keep global fuel prices in check.
On Tuesday, during a bilateral meeting with the president of the United Arab Emirates, Trump appeared to suggest the U.S. could let the sanctions waiver lapse when it expires on Wednesday, though he stopped short of giving a timeline.
“Soon, we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing,” Trump said when asked whether the U.S. planned to tighten sanctions on Russia. “We took sanctions off because obviously we’re not looking to impede the oil, but we’re in a position to do that soon.”
Ellen Francis in Brussels, Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Kostiantyn Khudov in Kyiv, and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Dan Diamond in Évian-les-Bains, France, contributed to this report.
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