Trump: Ukraine's Donbas region will have to be 'cut up'

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE

President Donald Trump has said that the Donbas region of Ukraine should be “cut up," leaving most of it in Russian hands, to end a war that has dragged on for nearly four years.

“Let it be cut the way it is,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Oct. 19. “It's cut up right now," adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now.”

“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should "stop at the battle line, go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”

Trump's latest comments came after Ukrainian drones struck a major gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan.

Trump has edged back in the direction of pressing Ukraine to give up on retaking land it has lost to Russia, in exchange for an end to Moscow’s aggression.

Asked in a Fox News interview conducted on Oct. 16 whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would be open to ending the war “without taking significant property from Ukraine,” Trump responded: “Well, he’s going to take something.”

“They fought and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property,” Trump said.

“We’re the only nation that goes in, wins a war and then leaves.”

The interview was aired on Oct. 19 on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” but was conducted before Trump spoke to Putin on Oct. 16 and met with Zelensky on Oct. 17.

Then on Oct. 19 evening, while flying from Florida to Washington, Trump, who plans to meet Putin in Budapest in coming weeks, reiterated his stance that Ukraine will need to give up territory by having the fighting “stop at the lines where they are.”

“The rest is very tough to negotiate if you're going to say, ‘You take this, we take that,’" he said. "You know, there are so many different permutations."

The comments amounted to another shift in position on the war by the U.S. leader. In recent weeks, Trump had shown growing impatience with Putin and expressed greater openness to helping Ukraine win the war.

Contrary to Kiev’s hopes, Trump did not commit to providing it with Tomahawks following his meeting with Zelensky. The missiles would be the longest-range weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal and would allow it to strike targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow, with precision.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian prosecutors claim that Moscow is modifying its deadly aerial-guided bombs to strike civilians deeper in Ukraine. Local authorities in Kharkiv said Russia struck a residential neighborhood using a new rocket-powered aerial bomb for the first time.

Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Russia used the weapon called the UMPB-5R, which can travel up to 130 kilometers, in an attack on the city of Lozava on Oct. 18. The city lies 150 kilometers south of Kharkiv, a considerable distance for the weapon to fly.