The conflict in Ukraine is existential, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a comment on the words of US President Donald Trump, who compared the war to a children's fight, Reuters and TASS reported.
Trump is entitled to his opinion, but for Russia the conflict is an existential issue, affecting ensuring its own security and the future of the country, Peskov said.
"I don't think so. Here, of course, the US president may have his own point of view. For us, this is an existential issue, it is a matter of our national interests, it is a matter of our security, our future and our children, the future of our country," the Kremlin spokesman emphasized.
The war began "after all options for resolving the problem through political and diplomatic means were exhausted," Peskov added.
At his meeting in the Oval Office yesterday with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the US president compared the war in Ukraine to a fight between two children who hate each other. Trump said that in such cases, "sometimes it's better to let them fight for a while and then break them up," adding that he had passed the analogy on to Putin in a conversation this week.
"I told him that they might have to keep fighting and suffer a lot because both sides suffer before they break them up, before they can be separated," Trump said.
"You see it in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees leave them for a few seconds before they break them up," he added.
The Kremlin will not intervene in the clash between Trump and Musk, but is confident that the US president will handle the situation, Peskov added in response to another question.
The clash between the two is an internal US matter, the spokesman stressed.