From the Independent / Yahoo!News:
"Russian President Vladimir Putin to children when asked about a potential meeting between the two leaders.
In an Oval Office interview on Friday with The Daily Caller, Trump responded to questions about his talks with Putin and Zelensky this month to end the war in Ukraine. When asked what he and Putin disagreed about during their summit in Alaska earlier this month, Trump told the outlet that the two of them got along and suggested the war may continue “a little longer.”
“I don’t know. We got along,” he said. “You saw it, we’ve had a good relationship over the years, very good, actually. That’s why I really thought we would have this done. I would have loved to have had it done. Maybe they have to fight a little longer. You know, just keep fighting — stupidly, keep fighting.”
Trump then compared Zelensky and Putin to children fighting on a playground, noting he isn’t sure a bilateral meeting between the two leaders will happen. The president previously said he was arranging for Putin and Zelensky to meet, and that he would join them for a trilateral summit afterward.
“A [trilateral] would happen. A [bilateral], I don’t know about, but a [trilateral] will happen,” Trump told The Daily Caller. “But, you know, sometimes people aren’t ready for it. I say, I use the analogy. I’ve used it a couple of times. You have a child, and there’s another child in the lot, in the playground, and they hate each other, and they start swinging, swinging and swinging, and you want them to stop, and they keep going.”
He continued: “After a little while, they’re very happy to stop. Do you understand that? It’s almost that way. Sometimes they have to fight for a little bit before you can get them to stop. But this has been going on for a long time. A lot of people are dead.”...
Top White House officials now believe that some European leaders may be prolonging the war by publicly supporting Trump’s push for peace while privately urging Zelensky to wait for a “better deal,” Axios reports..."
Trump had used the comparison before as well, and Ukrainian president Zelensky commented in the most polite way possible - from ABC News:
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refuted President Donald Trump's characterization of the war between Russia and Ukraine when he likened the countries to "two young people fighting like crazy" and saying "sometimes you're better off letting them fight for a while."
In an exclusive interview airing Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," co-anchor Martha Raddatz asked Zelenskyy if Trump "is getting the message" of suffering in Ukraine based on his Oval Office remarks.
"We are not kids with Putin at the playground in the park," Zelenskyy said Friday. "He is a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids."
Zelenskyy described the "limitless" pain of a Ukrainian father who lost his wife and three children in a missile strike.
The man's words to Zelenskyy were "different" than how officials talk about loss, the Ukrainian leader said.
"He wasn't mentioning any statistics or figures and numbers of strikes."
"He just said, 'Every morning when I wake up, I'm just looking for my family -- I'm looking everywhere in the flat ... I still feel that it was a nightmare … a bad dream,'" Zelenskyy said the man told him.
Trump "could not feel fully and understand this pain," Zelenskyy said.
"And it's not about President Trump, it's about any person who is not here in the country, who is some thousands of miles away -- [they] cannot feel fully and understand this pain," he said.
The Ukrainian president told Raddatz that 631 Ukrainian children have died in the war, and that Russia often targets civilians in its offensive."
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