Former US president Donald Trump has claimed that Russian aggression towards Ukraine would never have occurred if he were still in office.
In an interview on the ‘Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show’ on Tuesday, Trump said that the situation in Ukraine was not inevitable and could have been avoided if properly handled.
He accused President Joe Biden of being “weak” in his dealings with Russia.
“He (Putin) would never have done, during the Trump administration, what he is doing now, no way!
“I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he – and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.”
When asked what went wrong with respect to Ukraine, Trump answered:
“Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing.”
Remarking on Putin’s decision to recognise the independence of Ukrainian breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Trump called it ‘genius’, adding that on seeing the news on T.V., “I said, ‘How smart is that?’
Trump said that he always knew Putin “wanted Ukraine”.
“I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it. You’re not gonna do it’. But I could see that he wanted it. I used to ask him. We used to talk about it at length.”
Trump also took an opportunity to link Russian military presence on the Ukrainian border to primarily conservative concerns over the security along the US-Mexico border.
“We could use that on our southern border”, he said. “That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace alright.”