Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, Trump referred to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, which targeted airfields deep inside Russia.
"They gave [Russian President Vladimir] Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. That’s the thing I didn’t like about it," he said.
The attack involved more than 400 drones and 40 missiles, striking multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv. At least a dozen people were killed, according to local authorities.
Trump’s remarks followed controversial comments made on Thursday, in which he compared Russia’s war in Ukraine to "two young children fighting like crazy."
Speaking of his recent call with Putin, he said:
"Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try to pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled."
He added that he had not yet decided whether to impose new sanctions on Russia.
In a strongly worded response on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Trump’s characterisation.
"We are not kids with Putin at the playground in the park. He is a murderer who came to this park to kill the kids," he told ABC News.
Zelensky also spoke of the personal trauma faced by ordinary Ukrainians, recounting the story of a man who lost his wife and three children in a Russian missile strike.
"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,'" Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president added that President Trump could not fully understand the pain of Ukrainians.
"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 fully feel and understand this pain," he said.
Zelensky said that 631 Ukrainian children have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022.
On Saturday morning, Ukrainian officials reported that at least three people were killed and 21 injured in a massive overnight assault on the northeastern city of Kharkiv, which was struck by nearly 50 drones, missiles, and guided aerial bombs.
(ał)
Source: IAR