Trump says with lower oil prices, Putin is more eager to settle the Ukraine war

MOSCOW (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said Moscow and Kyiv want to settle the war in Ukraine and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was more inclined towards peace after the recent fall in the price of oil.

"I think Russia with the price of oil right now, oil has gone down, we are in a good position to settle, they want to settle. Ukraine wants to settle," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

The price of oil - which drives the Russian economy - has fallen around $15 a barrel since the start of the year. OPEC+ will accelerate oil output hikes, sources told Reuters.

"We've come a long way, and, it could be something will happen, but hopefully it will," Trump said.

Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe's biggest ground conflict since World War Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured and Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the "bloodbath" that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Trump noted that Putin had proposed a three-day ceasefire to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

"As you know, President Putin just announced a three-day ceasefire - which doesn't sound like much but its a lot if you knew where we started from," Trump said. "This is a war that should never happened".

Trump said that the number of those killed in the war was far higher than reported by most media organisations. Neither side in the war publishes up to date casualty figures.

The Kremlin, asked on Monday about a possible meeting between Trump and Putin in Saudi Arabia, said that a meeting was necessary but that Putin had no trips to the Middle East planned for mid-May. Trump has said he plans to visit Saudi Arabia as early as May.

Trump was asked by a reporter about whether or not he would order an investigation into the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.

A sharp pressure drop on the pipelines under the Baltic Sea was registered on Sept. 26, 2022, and seismologists detected explosions, triggering a wave of speculation about who sabotaged the multibillion-dollar project that carried Russian gas to Germany.

"They said Russia blew it up - yeah," Trump said in comments which indicated he doubted that Moscow as behind the attack. "I think a lot of people know who blew it up."

The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported that Ukraine - which has repeatedly denied involvement - was behind the attack. Ukraine has repeatedly denied involvement.

Russia has accused Western powers including the United States and Britain of being involved in the attack, but has published no evidence to support its theory.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Michael Perry)