President Donald Trump said Thursday that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.
In an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump likened the war in Ukraine — which Russia invaded in early 2022 — to a fight between two young children who hated each other.
“Sometimes you’re better off letting them a fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said. He added that he had relayed that analogy to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their phone conversation on Wednesday.
Asked about Trump’s comments as the two leaders sat next to each other, Merz stressed that both he and Trump agreed “on this war and how terrible this war is going on,” pointing to the U.S. president as the “key person in the world” who would be able to stop the bloodshed.
But Merz also emphasized that Germany “was on the side of Ukraine” and that Kyiv was only attacking military targets, not Russian civilians.
“We are trying to get them stronger,” Merz said of Ukraine.
Thursday’s meeting marked the first time that the two leaders sat down in person. After exchanging pleasantries — Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the U.S president’s grandfather Friedrich Trump, who immigrated from Germany — the two leaders were to discuss issues such as Ukraine, trade and NATO spending.
Trump and Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump’s relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president’s first term.
The 69-year-old Merz — who came to office with an extensive business background — is a conservative former rival of Merkel’s who took over her party after she retired from politics.
A White House official said topics that Trump is likely to raise with Merz include Germany’s defense spending, trade, Ukraine and what the official called “democratic backsliding,” saying the administration’s view is that shared values such as freedom of speech have deteriorated in Germany and the country should reverse course. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the discussions.
But Merz told reporters Thursday morning that if Trump wanted to talk German domestic politics, he was ready to do that but he also stressed Germany holds back when it comes to American domestic politics.
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Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, traveling to Kyiv with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving Zelenskyy in Berlin last week. He has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.
In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.”
Under Merz’s immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has vowed to keep up the support and last week pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any range limits.
In his remarks on Thursday, Trump still left the threat of sanctions on the table. He said sanctions could be imposed for both Ukraine and Russia.
“When I see the moment where it’s not going to stop … we’ll be very, very tough,” Trump said.
At home, Merz’s government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump’s first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defense, and Trump is now demanding at least five per cent from allies.
The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that five per cent mark.
Scholz set up a 100 billion euro (US$115 billion) special fund to modernize Germany’s armed forces — called the Bundeswehr — which had suffered from years of neglect. Germany has met the two per cent target thanks to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027.
Merz has said that “the government will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe.” He has endorsed a plan for all allies to aim to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on their defense budgets by 2032, plus an extra 1.5 per cent on potentially defense-related things like infrastructure.
Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump’s tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.
Germany exported US$160 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about US$85 billion more than what the U.S. sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.
“Germany is one of the very big investors in America,” Merz told reporters Thursday morning. “Only a few countries invest more than Germany in the USA. We are in third place in terms of foreign direct investment.”
The U.S. president has specifically gone after the German auto sector, which includes major brands such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. Americans bought US$36 billion worth of cars, trucks and auto parts from Germany last year, while the Germans purchased US$10.2 billion worth of vehicles and parts from the U.S.
Trump’s 25 per cent tariff on autos and parts is specifically designed to increase the cost of German-made automobiles in hopes of causing them to move their factories to the U.S., even though many of the companies already have plants in the U.S. with Volkswagen in Tennessee, BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and South Carolina.
There’s only so much Merz can achieve on his view that tariffs “benefit no one and damage everyone” while in Washington, as trade negotiations are a matter for the European Union’s executive commission. Trump recently delayed a planned 50 per cent tariff on goods coming from the European Union, which would have otherwise gone into effect this month.
One source of strain in recent months is a speech Vice President JD Vance gave in Munich shortly before Germany’s election in February, in which he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy on the continent and said there is no place for “firewalls.”
That term is frequently used to describe mainstream German parties’ refusal to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, which finished second in the election and is now the biggest opposition party.
Merz criticized the comments. He told ARD television last month that it isn’t the place of a U.S. vice president “to say something like that to us in Germany; I wouldn’t do it in America, either.”
—Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
