U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said in an in­ter­view pub­lished on Fri­day that “Crimea will stay with Rus­sia,” the lat­est ex­am­ple of the U.S. leader pres­sur­ing Ukraine to make con­ces­sions to end the war while it re­mains un­der siege.

“Ze­len­skyy un­der­stands that,” Trump said, re­fer­ring to Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, “and every­body un­der­stands that it’s been with them for a long time.”

The U.S. pres­i­dent made the com­ments in a Time mag­a­zine in­ter­view con­duct­ed on Tues­day. Trump has been ac­cus­ing Ze­len­skyy of pro­long­ing the war by re­sist­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

Crimea is a strate­gic penin­su­la along the Black Sea in south­ern Ukraine. It was seized by Rus­sia in 2014, while U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma was in of­fice, years be­fore the full-scale in­va­sion that be­gan in 2022.

“They’ve had their sub­marines there for long be­fore any pe­ri­od that we’re talk­ing about, for many years. The peo­ple speak large­ly Russ­ian in Crimea,” Trump said. “But this was giv­en by Oba­ma. This wasn’t giv­en by Trump.”

Mean­while, Rus­sia has con­tin­ued its bom­bard­ment. A drone struck an apart­ment build­ing in a south­east­ern Ukraine city, killing three peo­ple and in­jur­ing 10 oth­ers, of­fi­cials said Fri­day, a day af­ter Trump re­buked Rus­sia’s leader for a dead­ly mis­sile and drone at­tack on Kyiv.

A child and a 76-year-old woman were among the civil­ians killed in the night­time drone strike in Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetro­vsk re­gion, the head of the re­gion­al ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ser­hii Lysak, wrote on Telegram.

Russ­ian forces fired 103 Sha­hed and de­coy drones at five Ukrain­ian re­gions overnight, Ukraine’s air force re­port­ed. Au­thor­i­ties in the north­east­ern Sumy and Kharkiv re­gions re­port­ed dam­age to civil­ian in­fra­struc­ture but no ca­su­al­ties.

The war could be ap­proach­ing a piv­otal mo­ment as the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion weighs its op­tions. Se­nior U.S. of­fi­cials have warned that the ad­min­is­tra­tion could soon give up at­tempts to stop the war if the two sides do not come to an agree­ment. That could po­ten­tial­ly mean a halt of cru­cial U.S. mil­i­tary aid for Ukraine.

Amid the peace ef­forts, Rus­sia pound­ed Kyiv in an hours-long bar­rage Thurs­day, killing at least 12 peo­ple and in­jur­ing 87 in its dead­liest as­sault on the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal since Ju­ly.

The at­tack drew a rare re­buke of Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin from Trump, who has said that a push to end the war is com­ing to a head.

“I am not hap­py with the Russ­ian strikes on KYIV. Not nec­es­sary, and very bad tim­ing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 sol­diers a week are dy­ing.” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth So­cial plat­form. “Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”

Trump’s frus­tra­tion is grow­ing as his ef­fort to forge a deal be­tween Ukraine and Rus­sia has failed to achieve a break­through.

Trump en­voy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in Moscow on Fri­day, their sec­ond meet­ing this month and the fourth since Feb­ru­ary.

The Krem­lin re­leased a short video of Putin and Witkoff greet­ing each oth­er. “How are you, Mr. Pres­i­dent?” Witkoff could be heard say­ing. “Fine, just fine, thank you,” Putin re­spond­ed in rare re­marks in Eng­lish, as the two shook hands.

Putin’s for­eign pol­i­cy aide Yuri Ushakov and en­voy for in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion Kir­ill Dmitriev joined the two at the ta­ble for the talks.

Trump ac­cused Ze­len­skyy on Wednes­day of pro­long­ing the “killing field” by re­fus­ing to sur­ren­der the Rus­sia-oc­cu­pied Crimea Penin­su­la as part of a pos­si­ble deal. Rus­sia il­le­gal­ly an­nexed that area in 2014. Ze­len­skyy has re­peat­ed many times dur­ing the war that rec­og­niz­ing oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ry as Russ­ian is a red line for his coun­try.

Trump and Ze­len­skyy plan to ar­rive in Rome on Fri­day for the fu­ner­al of Pope Fran­cis in the Vat­i­can’s St. Pe­ter’s Square on Sat­ur­day. It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear if they would meet sep­a­rate­ly.

An ex­plo­sion in Moscow tar­gets a se­nior of­fi­cer

Mean­while, a se­nior Russ­ian mil­i­tary of­fi­cer was killed by a car bomb near Moscow on Fri­day, Rus­sia’s top crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion agency said.

The at­tack fol­lows the killing of Lt. Gen. Ig­or Kir­illov on Dec. 17, 2024, when a bomb hid­den on an elec­tric scoot­er parked out­side his apart­ment build­ing ex­plod­ed as he left for his of­fice. Russ­ian au­thor­i­ties blamed Ukraine for the killing of Kir­illov.

Since Rus­sia in­vad­ed, sev­er­al promi­nent fig­ures have been killed in tar­get­ed at­tacks be­lieved to have been car­ried out by Ukraine.

Russ­ian forces used Thurs­day’s at­tack on Kyiv as cov­er to launch al­most 150 as­saults on Ukrain­ian po­si­tions along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­ter (620-mile) front line, Ze­len­skyy said late Thurs­day.

“When the max­i­mum of our forces was fo­cused on de­fense against mis­siles and drones, the Rus­sians went on to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­ten­si­fy their ground at­tacks,” he wrote on Telegram.

West­ern Eu­ro­pean lead­ers have ac­cused Putin of drag­ging his feet in the ne­go­ti­a­tions and seek­ing to grab more Ukrain­ian land while his army has bat­tle­field mo­men­tum.

Ze­len­skyy not­ed Thurs­day that Ukraine agreed to a U.S. cease­fire pro­pos­al 44 days ago, as a first step to a ne­go­ti­at­ed peace, but that Russ­ian at­tacks con­tin­ued.

Dur­ing re­cent talks, Rus­sia hit the city of Sumy, killing more than 30 civil­ians gath­ered to cel­e­brate Palm Sun­day, bat­tered Ode­sa with drones and blast­ed Za­por­izhzhia with pow­er­ful glide bombs. —KYIV, Ukraine (AP)

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Sto­ry by IL­LIA NOVIKOV | As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Chris Megerian con­tributed from Wash­ing­ton.