Trump says Russia-Ukraine war is getting closer to ending
The comment comes after a week of intensified strikes on both sides, with no new negotiating mechanism announced.
Published
President Trump said the Russia-Ukraine war is getting closer to ending. He gave no new mechanism or timeline for a settlement.
The claim comes after a sharp rise in attacks rather than a lull. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 650 Ukrainian drones targeted the region overnight, a sharp jump from recent attacks. Russia's defence ministry said it struck data centres in major Ukrainian cities, a new category of target beyond energy and shipping infrastructure. Rosatom's chief said Ukraine attacked two sites at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, following earlier damage to a radiation monitoring station there.
Russia's Transport Ministry said all 23 crew of the Liberian-flagged tanker Aframax Rio are safe after an unmanned vessel attack in the Black Sea, days after Russia confirmed a separate strike on a cargo ship in the same waters on Sunday. Zelenskiy has said Ukraine will keep hitting Russian oil refineries, not civilian targets, and that Ukrainian forces have stabilised the front near Donetsk under an operation called Vivaldi. Russia's defence ministry has said it will intensify strikes on Kyiv and other regions in response to those refinery attacks, and the Kremlin has continued to say conditions for talks are not ready.
Trump has made similarly optimistic statements before. Prior rounds of talk about an energy ceasefire were followed by further strikes rather than any pullback in fighting. That pattern, of hopeful statements running alongside continued escalation, is what this latest remark joins, rather than any sign of a concrete move toward a settlement.