President Trump took a comfortable line Monday on Russia’s Vladimir Putin even after a bloody Palm Sunday assault that killed dozens of harmless Ukrainians.
Conceding that the Russian strongman was “no angel,” Trump refused to straight criticize Putin for the rocket strike within the metropolis of Sumy that killed 35 days on one of many holiest days on the Christian calendar.
“You take a look at Putin. I’m not saying anybody’s an angel,” Trump stated throughout an unrelated Oval Workplace assembly with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele.
President Donald Trump within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Pool by way of AP)
Trump backpedaled from his preliminary declare that the Russian assault was a “terrible mistake” to say the true mistake was permitting the struggle to begin within the first place.
He additionally repeated his declare that Ukraine bears an enormous share of the blame for the struggle.
“[Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy could’ve stopped it, and Putin should’ve never started it,” he stated. “Everybody’s to blame.”
Ukrainian emergency staff search by the rubble on the web site of a missile assault in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, on April 14, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Picture by ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
Trump appeared irked at Zelenskyy, who has pleaded for extra Western weaponry to repel the Russian invasion. He earlier criticized the Ukrainian chief for a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening.
“Listen, when you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war, right?” Trump stated of the Ukraine chief. “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”
Trump’s false claims however, the struggle began when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with none provocation from its neighbor.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a cupboard assembly by way of videoconference on the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outdoors Moscow, Russia, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Picture by way of AP)
Trump’s reluctance to straight criticize Putin comes because the president’s much-hyped effort to finish the struggle seems to be badly sputtering.
Russia’s new strike got here a day after a gathering Putin hosted in St. Petersburg with Trump particular envoy Steve Witkoff, which apparently yielded no breakthroughs.
Ukraine agreed a number of weeks in the past to an American proposal for a full ceasefire with Russian troops, who’ve seized about 20% of its territory.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet within the Oval Workplace on the White Home on February 28, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Picture by Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures)
Putin rejected the plan and as a substitute countered with a proposal for each side to halt assaults on power infrastructure and for a truce on assaults within the Black Sea.
Because the new flurry of diplomacy began, Russia has solely intensified assaults on Ukrainian civilian targets, culminating with the bloody Palm Sunday assault within the northeastern metropolis of Sumy.
Initially Printed: April 14, 2025 at 2:53 PM EDT
