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U.S. President Donald Trump wants a peace deal to end what his administration called the "senseless killing" in Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said Thursday, hours after a massive Russian overnight barrage on Kyiv killed at least 21 people and drove tens of thousands of residents into shelters.
"President Trump has a humanitarian heart and wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends," the official told AFP.
"The President and his team have worked very hard to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we'll ultimately get a peace deal done."
The strike tore open apartment buildings across the Ukrainian capital in one of the heaviest assaults on the city in recent memory.
Both Kyiv and Moscow vowed fresh assaults following the attack, signaling no near-term easing of hostilities in a conflict now in its fourth year.
Trump, who claimed before returning to office last year that he could resolve the Ukraine war within 24 hours, has yet to translate that pledge into results. U.S.-led efforts to broker a ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly hit dead ends.
The president has been openly critical of the cost of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and memorably confronted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February 2025. At the same time, Trump has maintained a notably warm posture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as frustration with Putin's unwillingness to halt the war has visibly grown within the administration.
With the war showing no signs of abating, Zelenskyy on Thursday called on allied nations to accelerate air-defense assistance to Ukraine, urging a dedicated discussion on the issue at next week's NATO summit in Ankara, which Trump is expected to attend.
The appeal came as the ruins of overnight strikes were still being cleared in Kyiv, underlining the urgency behind Zelenskyy's request. Air-defense capacity has been a persistent vulnerability for Ukraine throughout the conflict, with Russia continuing to exploit gaps in coverage through large-scale drone and missile barrages.
Despite diplomatic activity on multiple fronts, neither Russia nor Ukraine showed any sign of standing down Thursday.
The mutual pledges of further military action following the Kyiv strike cast a long shadow over ongoing peace efforts and raised fresh doubts about the prospects for a negotiated settlement in the near term.
Trump's team offered no specific timeline or framework for achieving the deal the president says he is optimistic about, leaving the path to any ceasefire as uncertain as it has been since U.S. mediation efforts began.
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