Trump on dead Ukrainians: ‘Some people in a town that got hit or whatever’

Sunday a Russian drone hit a park in Nova Vodolaha, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Six civilians dead. The youngest was a baby just over a year old, in her stroller. Fifteen wounded, seven of them kids.

Tuesday, in the Oval Office, Trump ran the numbers on the war. Last month, he said, “they lost 32,000 people between the both of them. They’re mostly soldiers, mostly young soldiers. Some people in a town that got hit or whatever, but mostly young soldiers.”

Some people. In a town. That got hit. Or whatever. That’s the whole entry for the civilians.

To be fair to the tape, he kept going: “It doesn’t affect us much. It doesn’t affect us in theory at all. We’re not involved. What affects me is to see that many souls lost so needlessly.” So the souls get a sentence. The baby in the stroller gets filed under “or whatever.”

Right before that, he said Zelensky is “going to have to want to make a deal.” Elsewhere in the same appearance he complained that America had given Ukraine a fortune and gotten “nothing back other than high diesel.” Ten days earlier Trump lifted US sanctions on Russian diesel, so the only diesel in this story came from the side flying the drones.

Also Tuesday, by the Guardian’s count, at least nine more people were killed across Ukraine, including passengers on the Kyiv to Odesa highway. Mostly young soldiers, presumably. Or whatever.