By Katherine Tinsley
3:25am PDT, Apr 19, 2025
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On Friday, April 18, Donald Trump met with reporters alongside Dr. Mehmet Oz to discuss the tension between Russia and Ukraine.
"We want to get it done. We're talking about here, people dying. We're taking about over there," Trump said. "People are dying also, like on average 2,500 young people soldiers."
"They're not from America," he continued. "They're from anywhere else other than Ukraine and Russia. But we want to save these lives."
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Ukraine has been a close ally to the United States, and during his first presidential term, Donald Trump's administration provided the nation approximately $1.5 billion in security assistance.
However, after the president's most recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, the U.S. placed a hold on military aid to the region.
"So it's 2,000 to 500 a week being killed in battle. It's a vicious battle with the best equipment, the best everything, and it is brutal," Trump revealed. "2,500 young people a week."
"Some of them not so young, actually. They're getting older," he noted. "They're going older by the month. But 2, 500 a week, and we're going to get it stopped, ideally."
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Donald Trump later seemed to throw jabs at Volodymyr Zelensky, as the two had a heated exchange back in February.
"Now, if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say, you're foolish, you are fools, you're horrible people, and we're gonna just take a pass. But hopefully, we won't have to do that," the real estate tycoon stated.
"We want to see it end. Think of it, every day, a lot of people are being killed as we talk about, you know, as they play games," he shared. "So we're not gonna take that, and we will see. I think we have a good chance of solving the problem, however."
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Journalists wondered if Donald Trump would remove himself from the conflict.
"Are you prepared to walk away completely from these efforts and these talks?" a reporter asked.
"Well, I don't want to say that, but we want to see it end. We want to it end, yeah," the president stressed.
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Donald Trump later attempted to blame the tension between the countries on previous presidents.
"Is Vladimir Putin stalling in your view, Mr. President?" a voice could be heard asking Trump.
"I hope not. I'm going to let you know about that soon, if he is. But I hope he's got a big force out there, a big force," the Republican stated.
"It's a war that should never have happened. It would have never happened if I were president," he continued.
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Due to Donald Trump having a business background, he approached working with Ukraine and Russia as if it were a corporate deal.
"What do you need to see from both sides in order to keep negotiations going?" a journalist asked. "What do want to see [from] Russia and Ukraine?"
"I have to see — my whole life has been one big negotiation and I know when people are playing us and when they're not, and I have seen an enthusiasm to want to end it and I think I see that enthusiasm," Trump replied. "I think I see it from both sides."
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"Do you think Russia's playing you here?" someone asked.
"No, nobody's playing me. I'm trying to help," Donald Trump stressed.
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While the Russo-Ukrainian war started in 2014, with the Russian annexation of Crimea, things escalated in 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale invasion. Despite there being issues in the region during Donald Trump's first administration, he blamed
Joe Biden for the conflict.
"You know, this was Biden's war," Trump declared. "By the way, by me getting involved, you know, they'll say, oh, it's Trump. This is not Trump's war, this is Biden's."
"This is a war that should have never happened. Okay? Think of it," he continued. "Those cities are crushed and crashed and all those beautiful steeples, the most beautiful in the world, actually considered the most beautiful in world, most of them are now smashed to smithereens, as they say, and lying on the ground in a million pieces."
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Donald Trump later acknowledged the amount of damage that occurred in the past few years.
"Those towns are crushed, the whole place. It's so horrible," Trump stressed. "And millions of people are dead, far more than you think. That's one thing you're gonna get out of this war. You're gonna find out that your estimates are far lower than, it's far worse than people think."
