As Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, sat beside him watching in silence, President Donald Trump compared Russia and Ukraine to two fighting children who needed to work out their differences for a while before anyone could intervene.

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office news conference. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”

“And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday,” Trump added. “I said, ‘President, maybe you have to keep fighting and suffering a lot, because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart, before they’re able to be pulled apart.'”

German Chancellor Seeks U.S. Leadership in Ukraine Conflict

Merz, who became Germany’s chancellor last month, had come to Washington hoping to persuade Trump to play a more active role in defending Ukraine by bringing unrivaled U.S. power to the task of forcing Russia to end its invasion of its smaller neighbor. But he got a very different response. Trump essentially threw up his hands, saying that there was nothing the United States could do right now to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end.

Trump repeatedly promised during the presidential campaign that he could make peace between the warring nations within 24 hours, but he now says he was being sarcastic.

Four months into his second term, Trump is talking about the war as if he is a bystander. When a reporter asked him at Thursday’s news conference whether he was going to put more sanctions on Russia, as he had previously threatened, Trump equivocated. He suggested he would know when the moment had arrived to pile on more pressure, but that it hadn’t yet.

He also suggested that Ukraine might come in for punishment.

“We’ll be very, very, very tough, and it could be on both countries to be honest,” Trump said. “You know, it takes two to tango.”

Trump’s Shifting Tone on Putin and Ukraine

The exchange was notable because Trump has said very little about the Russia-Ukraine war in recent weeks and almost nothing about Ukraine’s stunning drone attack over the weekend against nuclear-capable bombers inside Russia.

After calling Putin “absolutely crazy” last month, Trump shifted his tone and said he wanted to give the Russian leader “two weeks” to show signs of progress. He then dropped the timeline altogether in his statement on social media on Wednesday, instead simply relaying Putin’s intent to retaliate against Ukraine as if he was a commentator without a stake in the outcome.

Trump continued in that vein on Thursday, despite a plea from Merz to use American power to force Russia’s retreat. Merz reminded the president that the anniversary of the D-Day operation was Friday, June 6, “when the Americans once ended a war in Europe.”

“And I think this is in your hand, in specific, in ours,” Merz added.

Trump interjected with a joke about the Nazis. “That was not a pleasant day for you,” he said, referring to America’s defeat of Adolf Hitler.

Merz countered that, “in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship.”

“We know what we owe you,” he added, “but this is the reason why I’m saying that America is, again, in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war.”

President Compares War to Sports Referees

Trump made no commitments. Instead, he boasted about the U.S. economy and military recruitment numbers under his leadership. And then he compared the war to children fighting, or a hockey game.

“They fight, fight, fight,” he said. “Sometimes you let them fight for a little while. You see it in hockey. You see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds. Let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.”

Trump said he told Putin: “Don’t do it. You shouldn’t do it. You should stop it.”

But he did not seem confident that his words had any effect.

In the president’s telling, Putin replied that he had no choice but to attack based on Ukraine’s strikes over the weekend, and, Trump added, “it’s probably not going to be pretty.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jonathan Swan/Nanna Heitmann
c. 2025 The New York Times Company