President Trump took a soft line Monday on Russia’s Vladimir Putin even after a bloody Palm Sunday attack that killed dozens of innocent Ukrainians. Conceding that the Russian strongman was “no angel,” Trump refused to directly criticize Putin for the rocket strike in the city of Sumy that kil led 35 days on one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. “You take a look at Putin. I’m not saying anybody’s an angel,” Trump said during an unrelated Oval Office meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Pool via AP) Trump backpedaled from his initial claim that the Russian attack was a “terrible mistake” to say the real mistake was allowing the war to start in the first place. He also repeated his claim that Ukraine bears a big share of the blame for the war. “(Ukraine President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy could’ve stopped it and Putin should’ve never started it,” he said. “Everybody’s to blame.” Trump seemed irked at Zelenskyy, who has pleaded for more Western weaponry to repel the Russian invasion. He earlier criticized the Ukrainian leader for a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night. “Listen, when you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war, right?” Trump said of the Ukraine leader. “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.” Trump’s false claims notwithstanding, the war started when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 without any provocation from its neighbor. Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a cabinet meeting via videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Trump’s reluctance to directly criticize Putin comes as the president’s much-hyped effort to end the war appears to be badly sputtering. Russia’s new strike came a day after a meeting Putin hosted in St. Petersburg with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, which apparently yielded no breakthroughs. Ukraine agreed several weeks ago to an American proposal for a full ceasefire with Russian troops, who have seized about 20% of its territory. U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Oval Office at the White House on February 28, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Putin rejected the plan and instead countered with an offer for both sides to halt attacks on energy infrastructure and for a truce on attacks in the Black Sea. Since the new flurry of diplomacy started, Russia has only intensified attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets, culminating with the bloody Palm Sunday attack in the northeastern city of Sumy. ...read more read less