Trump questions if Ukraine ready 'to settle' unprovoked invasion of its borders
Ukraine faced fresh Russian attacks on gas, energy infrastructure on Friday
U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Friday that depriving Ukraine of potential additional defensive support would test its willingness "to settle" an unprovoked invasion of its borders by Russia that has entered a fourth year.
"I have to know that they want to settle. I don't know that they want to settle," Trump said Friday, when asked by a reporter why he would not consider providing Ukraine with air defences if Washington was pausing military assistance to Kyiv.
"If they don't want to settle, we're out of there, because we want them to settle. And I'm doing it to stop death."
Air defences are critical tools for Ukraine, though those it has in place may be less capable than they could be amid a decision by the U.S. to halt the sharing of intelligence with Kyiv — that comes in addition to a parallel pause in U.S. military aid.
"The Ukrainians do have options of their own for detecting incoming missiles," Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow with the Royal United Services Institute think-tank told Britain's Channel 4 News.
"Of course, having early warning of the launch, and ideally a good understanding of roughly what time, and from what direction a threat is likely to appear, will generally significantly improve the effectiveness of any given air-defence system," he said.
Trump has repeatedly highlighted the death toll of the all-out war between Russia and Ukraine, which began when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine's borders in February 2022.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have since been killed by Russian bombs, drones, shelling and missiles, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said more than 45,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died defending their country. Both figures may be undercounts.
NATO chief Mark Rutte said in October that at that point in the all-out war, Russia had seen more than 600,000 soldiers killed or wounded.
U.S. pressure on Ukraine
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up the pressure on Ukraine, stating its intent to rapidly halt the conflict.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Friday and affirmed that Trump "is determined to end the war as soon as possible," the U.S. State Department said in a statement.
But in moving toward that goal, the Trump administration has been much more publicly critical of Ukraine than of the country that started the invasion — a trend that continued Friday.
"I'm finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine," said Trump, who previously suggested Ukraine was to blame for the conflict.
One contradictory element of Trump's communications on Friday, however, came from a social media post indicating he was "strongly considering" sanctions on Russia to push toward a ceasefire and "final settlement agreement on peace."
The wider tension on display between Washington and Kyiv has also included a public dressing down of Ukraine's president when he visited the White House a week ago.
U.S. officials have also pushed Kyiv to agree to give the U.S. access to desirable minerals buried under Ukrainian soil, to achieve Trump has billed as "equalization" for aid provided by Washington.
Separate from all of that, Trump has ended the isolation of Putin — first engaging in a phone call with him and then arranging U.S. talks with Russia about ending the war, but without Ukraine's initial involvement.
More recently came the pausing of U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
Amid these changes, Russia attacked Ukraine with a fresh missile and drone assault on Ukrainian gas and energy infrastructure on Friday.
"They're bombing the hell out of Ukraine," said Trump, who also stated that he believes Putin wants peace.
"I think we're doing very well with Russia," said Trump, who predicted "it may be easier dealing with Russia" in trying to bring the war to an end.
Yet Zelenskyy has said he'll travel next week to Saudi Arabia, where talks are due to occur between American and Ukrainian officials.
"Ukraine is ready to pursue the path to peace," Zelenskyy said on Telegram Friday.
Roderic Lyne, a former diplomat who served as Britain's ambassador to Russia during Putin's early years as president, said Zelenskyy "has now done everything that's been asked of him" by the U.S. to date.
"If the Ukrainians stopped fighting tomorrow, they would just get rolled over by the Russians," Lyne told Times Radio.
"The Russians started it, the Russians can stop it — literally at the click of Putin's fingers."
Fresh attack on infrastructure
Ukraine's energy minister said on Friday that Russian forces had targeted Ukraine's energy and gas infrastructure in the first large-scale attack by Russia since the U.S. suspended its military aid and intelligence sharing.
Regional officials from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the western city of Ternopil reported damage to energy and other infrastructure. Eight people were injured in Kharkiv and two more were hurt in Poltava, in central Ukraine, officials said.
"Russia continues its energy terror," Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Facebook, citing "massive missile and drone fire" against energy and gas infrastructure in various Ukrainian regions.
Ukraine's air force said Russia had fired a salvo of 67 missiles and 194 drones in the overnight attack, adding that it had shot down roughly half of the barrage.
Ukraine deployed French Mirage-2000 warplanes delivered a month ago to help repel the attack, the air force said.
Zelenskyy called for a truce in the air and at sea, as well as additional pressure on Russia.
"The first steps to establishing real peace should be forcing the sole source of this war, Russia, to stop such attacks," he said on Telegram.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces carried out strikes with long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons against what it called gas and energy infrastructure supporting Ukraine's "military-industrial complex."
Ukraine inroads in Kursk threatened
On the other side of the border, thousands of Ukrainian troops who stormed into Russia's Kursk region last summer in a shock incursion are nearly surrounded by Russian forces there in a major blow to Kyiv, which hoped to use its presence there as leverage over Moscow in any peace talks.
Ukraine's situation in Kursk has deteriorated sharply in the last three days, open source maps show, after Russian forces retook territory as part of a gathering counteroffensive that has nearly cut the Ukrainian force in two and separated the main group from its principal supply lines.
The precarious situation raises the possibility that Ukraine's forces may be forced into a politically awkward and psychologically difficult retreat back into their country, or risk being captured or killed.
"The situation is very bad," Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which analyzes satellite data, told Reuters.
"Now there is not much left until Ukrainian forces will either be encircled or forced to withdraw. And withdrawal would mean running a dangerous gauntlet, where the forces would be constantly threatened by Russian drones and artillery," he said.
Open source mapping from Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian military blogging resource, showed on Friday that about three-quarters of the Ukrainian force inside Russia had now been almost completely encircled.
There was no official confirmation of the Russian thrust from its Defence Ministry or the Ukrainian military.
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With files from The Associated Press and Reuters