Donald Trump on Wednesday stated that Russia wanted to put an end to the “barbarianism” going on in its war with Ukraine as the US and Russia held negotiations on ending the conflict.

While addressing reporters at the White House, Trump said, “Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the barbarianism that’s going on over there. Soldiers are being killed by thousands on a weekly basis. Apart from Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, a lot of Koreans have been killed. We want to end it.”

He also claimed that a war would never have broken out under his watch, saying, “It’s a senseless war. It should have never happened; it would have never happened if I were President.”

Negotiations to end the three-year-long war began in Riyadh on Tuesday at the Diriyah Palace. US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible.”