Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Thurs­day of­fered rare crit­i­cism of Vladimir Putin, urg­ing the Russ­ian leader to “STOP!” af­ter a dead­ly bar­rage of at­tacks on Kyiv, Ukraine’s cap­i­tal.

“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 said in a post on his Truth So­cial plat­form. “Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”

Rus­sia struck Kyiv with an hours-long bar­rage of mis­siles and drones. At least 12 peo­ple were killed and 90 were in­jured in the dead­liest as­sault on the city since last Ju­ly.

Trump’s frus­tra­tion is grow­ing as a U.S.-led ef­fort to get a peace agree­ment be­tween Ukraine and Rus­sia has not made progress.

The com­ments about Putin came af­ter Trump lashed out at Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy on Wednes­day and ac­cused him of pro­long­ing the “killing field” by re­fus­ing to sur­ren­der the Rus­sia-oc­cu­pied Crimean Penin­su­la as part of a pos­si­ble deal. Rus­sia il­le­gal­ly an­nexed that area in 2014.

AP Wash­ing­ton cor­re­spon­dent Sagar Meghani re­ports on Pres­i­dent Trump’s rare crit­i­cism of Vladimir Putin af­ter Russ­ian strikes on Ukraine.

With his as­ser­tion that Putin demon­strat­ed “very bad tim­ing” with the mas­sive at­tack, Trump ap­peared to sug­gest that the Russ­ian leader was do­ing him­self no fa­vors to­ward achiev­ing the Krem­lin’s de­mand that any peace agree­ment in­clude Rus­sia keep­ing con­trol of Crimea as well as Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in the Luhan­sk, Donet­sk, Za­por­izhzhia and Kher­son re­gions it has seized since in­vad­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

Lat­er Thurs­day dur­ing an Oval Of­fice meet­ing with Nor­we­gian Prime Min­is­ter Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump said that Crimea was tak­en from Ukraine with­out a fight. He al­so not­ed that an­nex­a­tion of the Black Sea penin­su­la hap­pened un­der Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s watch.

Asked what Putin is do­ing now to help forge a peace deal, Trump re­spond­ed, “stop­ping tak­ing the whole coun­try, pret­ty big con­ces­sion.”

But the no­tion is one that Ukraine and much of Eu­rope have fierce­ly pushed back against, ar­gu­ing that Rus­sia paus­ing a land grab is hard­ly a con­ces­sion.

Ze­len­skyy has re­peat­ed many times that rec­og­niz­ing oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ry as Rus­sia’s is a red line for Ukraine. He not­ed Thurs­day that Ukraine had agreed to a U.S. cease­fire pro­pos­al 44 days ago as a first step to a ne­go­ti­at­ed peace, but that Moscow’s at­tacks had con­tin­ued.

Trump’s crit­i­cism of Putin is no­table be­cause Trump has re­peat­ed­ly said Rus­sia is more will­ing than Ukraine to get a deal done.

“I didn’t like last night,” Trump said of Rus­sia’s mas­sive at­tack on Kyiv. “I wasn’t hap­py with it.”

In his deal­ings with Ze­len­skyy and Putin, Trump has fo­cused on which leader has lever­age. Putin has “the cards” and Ze­len­skyy does not, Trump has said re­peat­ed­ly. At the same time, the new Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en steps to­ward a more co­op­er­a­tive line with Putin, for whom Trump has long shown ad­mi­ra­tion.

Trump in his meet­ing with Nor­way’s Gahr Støre dis­cussed the war in Ukraine, U.S. tar­iffs and oth­er is­sues.

Nor­way, a mem­ber of NA­TO and strong sup­port­er of Ukraine, shares a rough­ly 123-mile (198-kilo­me­tre) bor­der with Rus­sia.

Gahr Støre said “both par­ties have to know that they have to de­liv­er.” He al­so sug­gest­ed that Trump is push­ing the two sides to come to an agree­ment.

“To move to­wards an end of this war, U.S en­gage­ment is crit­i­cal, and Pres­i­dent Trump made that pos­si­ble,” he said. “That is clear.”

Mean­while, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron said Putin should “stop ly­ing” when he claims to want “peace” while con­tin­u­ing to bomb Ukraine.

“There is on­ly one an­swer we are wait­ing for: Does Pres­i­dent Putin agree to an un­con­di­tion­al cease­fire?” said Macron dur­ing a vis­it to Mada­gas­car. Macron added that “the Amer­i­cans’ anger should fo­cus on just one per­son: Pres­i­dent Putin.”

The French For­eign Min­istry al­so of­fered mea­sured push­back on Trump’s crit­i­cism of Ze­len­skyy over the Ukrain­ian’s stance on Crimea.

Dur­ing talks last week in Paris, U.S. of­fi­cials pre­sent­ed a pro­pos­al that in­clud­ed al­low­ing Rus­sia to keep con­trol of oc­cu­pied Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry as part of a deal, ac­cord­ing to a Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cial fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter. The pro­pos­al was dis­cussed again Wednes­day dur­ing talks with U.S., Eu­ro­pean, and Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials.

“The prin­ci­ple of Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty is not some­thing that can be ne­go­ti­at­ed,” For­eign Min­istry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said. “This was the po­si­tion tak­en last week and re­it­er­at­ed yes­ter­day in Lon­don in a meet­ing of a sim­i­lar for­mat.”

Asked whether France agreed with Trump’s com­ments that Ukraine’s po­si­tion was to blame for pro­long­ing the war, Lemoine said Ukraini­ans showed they are open to ne­go­ti­a­tions while Rus­sia con­tin­ues its strikes.

“We rather have the im­pres­sion that it is the Rus­sians who are slow­ing down the dis­cus­sions,” he said.

The White House an­nounced Tues­day that Trump’s spe­cial en­voy, Steve Witkoff, would vis­it Moscow this week for a new round of talks with Putin about the war. It would be their fourth meet­ing since Trump took of­fice in Jan­u­ary.

De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth met on Thurs­day with NA­TO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Mark Rutte, who al­so held talks with Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and Trump’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Michael Waltz.

Lead­ers from the 32-mem­ber al­liance are set to meet in the Nether­lands in two months. Trump has pushed them to sig­nif­i­cant­ly step up de­fence spend­ing.

In 2023, as Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine en­tered its sec­ond year, they agreed that all al­lies should spend at least 2% of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct on their mil­i­tary bud­gets. Es­ti­mates in NA­TO’s an­nu­al re­port re­leased Thurs­day showed that 22 al­lies had reached that goal last year, com­pared with a pre­vi­ous fore­cast of 23.

“But clear­ly with 2%, we can­not de­fend NA­TO ter­ri­to­ry,” Rutte told re­porters at the White House fol­low­ing the meet­ing. “It has to be con­sid­er­ably high­er.”

Pe­tre­quin re­port­ed from Paris. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Lorne Cook in Brus­sels con­tributed to this re­port.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) —