President Donald Trump said in an interview published Friday that “Crimea will stay with Russia,” the latest example of the U.S. leader pressuring Ukraine to make concessions to end the war while it remains under siege.

In 1944, Stalin deported almost all Crimean Tatars to Central Asia in what Ukraine recognises as an act of genocide. They were only allowed to return home in the late 1980s. As we've been reporting, Crimea has been a point of contention in peace talks for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

The president called for a peace deal to be “DONE” after claiming it was “harder” to negotiate with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.