German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had one main ask of President Donald Trump during his Oval Office visit on Thursday: that the American president stand with Europe in pressuring Moscow to back down from attacks on Ukraine and push to end the three-year war.

To which Trump replied: Maybe they need to fight a little longer.

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as Merz looked on, stone faced. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”

It was the latest pivot by Trump away from the bloody conflict that he once said confidently that he would end.

On Thursday, however, he compared the Russia-Ukraine war to a hockey game, where referees sometimes allow players to drop gloves and brawl on the ice — an observation he said he had also made earlier in the week in a private phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. “I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday,” he added. “I said, ‘President, maybe you’re going to have to keep fighting and suffering a lot, because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart, before they’re able to be pulled apart.’”

Trump’s posture comes as a substantial setback for Merz and his fellow European leaders, at a moment that German officials say could be decisive for Ukraine’s chances of forging peace on favorable terms.

Merz had come to Washington hoping to persuade Trump to play a more active role in defending Ukraine, bringing unrivaled U.S. power to the task of forcing Russia to end its invasion of its smaller neighbor.

The German leader told reporters in the Oval Office that both he and Trump favored stopping the war soon. “And I told the president before we came in,” he said, “that he is the key person in the world who can really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.”

But Trump made no promises of such pressure. The closest he came was in response to a question about if and when he might favor new financial penalties on Russia, as European leaders, including Merz, have proposed. Trump said he had a deadline “in my brain” for when he might favor such a move.

He also suggested that Ukraine, the victim of Russian aggression, might come in for financial punishment. “We’ll be very, very, very tough, and it could be on both countries, to be honest,” Trump said. “You know, it takes two to tango.”

Aides say that Trump is exasperated with both presidents in the conflict, but often more so with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. Trump has told his advisers that Zelenskyy is a “bad guy” who is edging the world to the precipice of nuclear war. But Trump has also told aides that it is understandable that Zelenskyy is fighting back, given he is in a war against an enemy that seems determined to keep bombing Ukrainian cities.

With Putin, the president seems more disappointed than angry. He had seemed to genuinely believe that his personal relationship with the Russian leader would bring a swift end to the war, advisers say. But Trump has learned the limits of American leverage with Russia when he is reluctant to send Ukraine more money or weapons.

Superficially, at least, the Oval Office appearance went better for Merz than he and his advisers privately had expected. There were none of the blow-ups that have characterized some of Trump’s other meetings with foreign leaders. The two men had a warm rapport and exchanged compliments, with Trump asking jokingly at one point if the chancellor spoke German as well as he spoke English.

Merz had rehearsed for the trip, and his aides sought advice from other foreign officials who have recently visited the White House. They were determined to avoid the sort of public dressing-down that Trump had given Zelenskyy and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa in recent months.

Merz spoke critically of Trump soon after he returned to the White House, and he has drawn criticism from Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Germany’s restrictions on political speech, including by the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

On Thursday, Vance and Rubio sat silently on a couch through the 45-minute televised news conference.

German and American officials said before the meeting that the war in Ukraine would top the leaders’ agenda, along with discussions of European military spending and efforts to help resolve trade tensions between the United States and the European Union.

Merz’s repeately tried to extract a more solid commitment. At one point, in what appeared to be a rehearsed line, Merz reminded the president that the anniversary of the D-Day operation was coming on Friday: June 6, “when the Americans once ended a war in Europe.”

The line did not have its intended effect.

Trump interjected a joke about the Nazis. “That was not a pleasant day for you,” he said, referring to America’s defeat of Adolf Hitler.

Merz countered, in a serious tone, that “in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship.”

“We know what we owe you,” the chancellor added, “but this is the reason why I’m saying that America is, again, in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war.”

Trump made no commitments. Instead, he boasted about the U.S. economy and military recruitment numbers under his leadership. And then he compared the war to children fighting, or a hockey game.