Trump: Ukraine's Donbas Region Should Be 'Cut Up' to End War

US President Trump said Sunday 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, the AP reports. "Let it be cut the way it is," he told reporters aboard Air Force One. "It's cut up right now," he said, 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, Russian and Kazakh authorities said Sunday. Kyiv has ramped up attacks in recent months on Russian energy facilities it says both fund and directly fuel Moscow's war effort.

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 Thursday 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 Sunday on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, but was conducted before Trump spoke to Putin on Thursday and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.

Then on Sunday 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 US leader. In recent weeks, Trump had shown growing impatience with Putin and expressed greater openness to helping Ukraine win the war.