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Trump Says He May Let Russia, Ukraine ‘Fight for a Little While’

US President Donald Trump and Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor outside the White House in Washington, DC, on June .

Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

US President Donald Trump said it might be necessary to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a little while” before brokering a peace deal and suggested he might be willing to implement fresh sanctions on both countries if he determined the conflict wasn’t going to end.

“Sometimes you let them fight for a little while,” Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday. “You see it in hockey, you see it in sports, the referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart.”