President Trump made an unusually sharp appeal to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday, calling on him to stop his bombing campaign in Ukraine and agree to a peace deal after the deadliest attack on Kyiv in nearly a year.
“Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.
Russia’s missile attack came a day after the Trump administration threatened to abandon peace talks if Ukraine did not accept a U.S. peace proposal that heavily favored Russia.
Mr. Trump’s comments were striking because he has mostly avoided even mild criticism of Mr. Putin in his handling of the talks so far. Instead, he has directed most of his anger toward President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, calling him a “dictator” and describing him as the main impediment to a peace deal.
While Mr. Trump made clear he was running out of patience for the two sides to agree on a peace deal, he also sought to pre-emptively divert blame should the negotiations fall apart, a sign that he is perhaps more pessimistic than he was when he regained the presidency brimming with confidence about his talent as a negotiator.
The Russia-Ukraine war, which Mr. Trump had previously said he could resolve in “24 hours,” was now, he suggested, a matter of great difficulty and complexity.
“This isn’t my war,” Mr. Trump said during a Thursday Oval Office meeting with Norway’s prime minister. “It’s Biden’s war.”
Mr. Trump refused to draw a moral distinction between Russia and Ukraine, or to blame Mr. Putin for his invasion — something he has repeatedly refused to do in his second term.
He reiterated, though, that he was “not happy” with Russia’s deadly attack on Kyiv overnight, which came as the Trump administration demanded that Mr. Zelensky accept a peace settlement that would grant Russia essentially all the territory it had gained in the war, while offering Ukraine tenuous security assurances from the Europeans.
The plan, which would also block Ukraine from ever joining NATO, was rejected by Mr. Zelensky, infuriating Mr. Trump.
Pressed about what concessions Russia had offered, Mr. Trump said that it had agreed to stop “taking the whole country.” Mr. Putin’s military has failed to make any significant territorial gains recently.
Mr. Trump added that it would be hard for Ukraine to gain back the territory it had lost during Russian invasions that took place during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. Ukraine getting back Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, would be “a very difficult thing to do,” he said. But Mr. Trump claimed that he was “using a lot of pressure” behind the scenes on both Russia and Ukraine.
Senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have signaled that Mr. Trump is getting impatient and might walk away from the negotiations if Russia and Ukraine do not come to an agreement soon. If the United States withdraws from the talks, and cuts off its supply of weapons to the Ukrainian military, Mr. Putin would have a greater chance of capturing more of the country.
When a reporter on Thursday asked Mr. Trump whether he would impose new sanctions on Russia after the overnight bombing of Kyiv, Mr. Trump declined to say, adding only that he should be asked again in a week. He said that he wanted to see what progress his team could make through negotiations.
Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, also met with Mr. Trump on Thursday at the White House, to discuss the war in Ukraine and an upcoming NATO summit. Mr. Rutte said afterward that he had a “very good meeting” with Mr. Trump, and that he did not think the United States would walk away from the Russia-Ukraine talks.
While Mr. Trump has said he believes Mr. Putin wants to make peace, Mr. Rutte said on Thursday that he did “not know” whether that was the case.
“There is something on the table now, I think, where Ukrainians are really playing ball, and I think the ball is clearly in the Russian court,” Mr. Rutte added.
Mr. Trump on Thursday also raised expectations for another difficult diplomatic effort his administration is undertaking this weekend with a hostile foreign government, when an American negotiating team begins technical talks with the Iranians in Oman.
“I think we’re doing very well on that, an agreement with Iran,” Mr. Trump said.
The Israeli government has been pushing Mr. Trump to support a military campaign that would destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. The president has so far withheld his support for Israel’s mission, preferring to give diplomacy a chance. But he has also insisted that he will never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
