Trump: Putin Wants Peace, Won’t Take Over ‘All of Ukraine’ Because He ‘Respects’ Me (2025)

US President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin still hopes to seize all of Ukraine, but claimed he would not succeed due to Putin’s “respect” for him.

“I think that he - let’s say he respects me. And I believe because of me he’s not going to take over the whole [country] - but his decision, his choice, would be to take over all of Ukraine,” Trump said in an interview with ABC News.

Trump has called for a ceasefire in the three-year war, but his campaign promise to end the conflict within 24 hours still remains out of reach.

The president said he believes Putin wants to end the war but may delay the peace process. When asked if the Russian leader truly seeks peace, Trump replied, “Yes, he does,” before asking the interviewer to move on to other questions.

The remarks came days after Trump expressed doubts about Putin’s intentions following a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome.

“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.”

The interview comes amid intensive rounds of negotiations between US, European, and Ukrainian officials in Paris and London, centered on US peace proposals.

While the exact terms of the US-proposed deal are not publicly known, media reports, citing unnamed US officials, said it included the USrecognizing Crimea as Russian – reversing its longstanding policy after Russia’s 2014 annexation – in exchange for Moscow’s backing down on itsmaximalist demand to occupy five Ukrainian regions, most of which are not entirely under Russian control at present.

Zelensky said his country would never recognize Crimea as Russian because its status as part of his country is enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution.

Vice President JD Vance said both sides would likely need to “give up some of the territory they currently own.” President Trump, however, described Russia’s part of the deal as simply agreeing to stop invading and not trying to take more territory it doesn’t already control.

On Monday, April 28, the Kremlin said it was ready to begin peace talks with Ukraine without preconditions. Later Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov backpedalled on that messagesby reiterating previous maximalist Russian demands for Ukraine’s neutral status and non-accession to NATO, and calling international recognition of the annexed Ukrainian regions as part of Russia as being “imperative.”

On Tuesday, April 29, the State Department urged both Russia and Ukraine to submit peace proposals.

“We are now at a time where concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict,” she said.

“How we proceed from here is a decision that belongs now to the President If there is no progress, we will step back as mediators in this process,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce added.