UKRAINE - US President Donald Trump has said he is finding it "more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine" than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.
The US is "doing very well with Russia", and "it may be easier dealing with" Moscow than Kyiv, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
Hours earlier, Trump had said he was "strongly considering" large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached. Meanwhile, the US has temporarily suspended Ukraine's access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar told BBC Verify, after Trump had already paused military aid to the country.
It comes exactly one week after an extraordinary White House exchange, in which Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for being "disrespectful" to the US. That public dressing-down was followed this week by Trump pausing all US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. Russia then conducted a large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure on Thursday night.
