US president-elect Donald Trump has said Ukraine needs to reach a deal to end the Russian invasion and downplayed the value of occupied land, in the latest signal he may push for a settlement that codifies Russian territorial gains.
“He should be prepared to make a deal, that’s all,” Mr Trump said of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, while speaking Monday at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club.
“Got to be a deal. Too many people being killed.”
Mr Trump said it would take a century to rebuild Ukrainian cities levelled by the Russian invasion and brushed aside Ukrainian hopes of recapturing seized territory.
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He again criticised the use of US weapons to strike targets deeper in Russian territory – a tactic adopted after approval by the current White House, raising the likelihood that Mr Trump will balk at extending that authority if fighting continues.
“It’s nice to say they want their land back, but the cities are largely destroyed,” Mr Trump said. “You look at some of those cities, and not one building standing. So you know, when you say, ‘Take over the country’, take over what? Take over what? That’s a 110-year rebuild.”
The comments are the latest signal that Mr Trump’s election will sharply curtail, if not altogether end, US aid for Ukraine.
Mr Trump said several times that he believes Russian leader Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he were still in office and criticised president Joe Biden’s administration for the decision to allow Ukraine to use Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, to strike back deeper into Russian territory. The missiles have a range of about 300 kilometres.
“I don’t think they should have allowed missiles to be shot 200 miles into Russia,” he said.
Mr Trump also briefly discussed his meeting this month in Paris with Mr Zelenskiy. He said in response to a question from a reporter that he didn’t invite Mr Zelenskiy to his inauguration, despite invitations to other world leaders.
“If he’d like to come, I’d like to have him. I didn’t invite him, no,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump said the war in Ukraine is “a nasty one” and said an “astronomical” number of soldiers are being killed on both sides.
“If I were president, that war would have never happened,” he said.
Meanwhile, Washington has indications that North Korean troops have been killed and injured, the Pentagon said on Monday.
“We do assess that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat in Kursk . . . we do have indications that they have suffered casualties, both killed and wounded,” said Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder.
He said he did not have details on numbers of North Korean casualties but added that the North Korean troops entered combat last week.
Ukraine said earlier on Monday that North Korean units fighting for Russia sustained losses of at least 30 soldiers killed or wounded around several villages on the front in Russia’s Kursk region over the weekend.
The Ukrainian military spy agency’s statement came after Mr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Russia was using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults in Kursk, a Russian region where Ukraine launched a cross-border incursion in August. – Agencies.