Donald Trump said “Crimea will stay with Russia,” with his envoy in Moscow for expected talks with Vladimir Putin.
The US president also believes Ukraine will never join Nato.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Trump said: “Crimea will stay with Russia. And Zelensky understands that, and everybody understands that it's been with them for a long time.”
On Kyiv joining the West’s military alliance, he added: “I don’t think they’ll ever be able to join NATO.
“I think that's been—from day one, I think that's been, that's I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining NATO.
“If that weren't brought up, there would have been a much better chance that it wouldn’t have started.”
Meanwhile, Putin rejected Trump’s plea to stop attacks on Ukraine as five people were killed in new drone strikes.
The latest civilian casualties came as the US president’s envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Friday where he is expected to meet Putin who has so far rebuffed Washington’s calls for a Ukraine ceasefire.
His latest visit to Moscow comes a day after Trump criticised a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv that killed at least 12 people, and posted on social media: “Vladimir, STOP!”
But the US president’s plea did not stop the bloodshed, with five people, including a child, killed in renewed Russian attacks on Ukraine, officials said on Friday.
Three of the victims were killed in the city of Pavlohrad after a drone strike, said Serhiy Lysak, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region.
He added that 14 people were wounded in the attack on a five-storey building, including a six-year-old boy and teenagers, aged 15 and 17.
Donetsk regional prosecutors said separately that two people had been killed in an attack early on Friday on the settlement of Yarova, where the Russian army reportedly dropped an aerial bomb on a residential building.
Despite the ongoing attacks, Trump is claiming significant progress in peace talks.
“This next few days is going to be very important,” he said on Thursday.
But diplomatic experts have cast doubt on whether Russia and Ukraine can agree a deal to end the war which Putin launched more than three years ago.
Trump has been accused of siding with Putin and putting pressure on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to make major concessions.
Britain has rejected the US president’s claim that Kyiv is the obstacle to peace, with Sir Keir Starmer condemning Putin as the “aggressor”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the talks were “moving in the right direction” but “some specific points ... need to be fine-tuned.”
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, conceded that Ukraine may have to give up land as part of a peace deal with Russia.
“One of the scenarios is… to give up territory. It’s not fair. But for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be a solution, temporary,” he told the BBC.
The US administration is reportedly urging Kyiv to accept Russia’s continued control of occupied Ukrainian regions and to accept Moscow’s ownership of the Crimean peninsula as part of a peace settlement.
But Mr Zelensky has rebuffed suggestions he could cede Crimea to Moscow.
