Former US President Donald Trump cast blame on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – not Russian President Vladimir Putin – for the latter’s invasion of the smaller European country.
Trump brought up Zelensky while attacking President Joe Biden’s leadership on the conservative PBD Podcast.
‘I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,’ said Trump in the podcast released on Thursday.
‘Every time he comes in, we give him $100billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people.’
Trump then twisted the facts on the beginning of the conflict.
‘But he should never have let that war start,’ Trump said of Zelensky.
‘That war is a loser.’
The Russia–Ukraine conflict dates back more than a decade. Putin ordered Russian troops and separatist groups to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. The Russian president initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Trump added that Biden ‘instigated’ the war and reiterated his claim that it ‘would never have happened’ if he were still in the White House.
In another hit on Biden, Trump said that if a smarter president were in charge, the war ‘would have been easy to settle’.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from on the ex-president blaming Zelensky.
Trump’s remark came on the heels of him recently boasting about his ‘very good relationship’ with Putin.
Last week, former CIA head Leon Panetta, who served under the Obama administration, warned that Trump has become a source for Putin.
‘He (Putin) knows how to work a source and he’s got a source that is very near the top in this country, he, himself is going to engage that source,’ Panetta said on the One Decision podcast, which he co-hosts.
‘I think Donald Trump in many ways is naïve about who Putin really is.’
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