US President Donald Trump has made a new claim that the war in Ukraine would not have happened ‘if Ukraine President Zelensky was competent’, as he vowed to ‘stop the k!lling’.
Trump blamed the Ukrainian president, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his predecessor Joe Biden for the war, before implying that Putin would have never invaded if he had been in power in the US.
‘If Biden were competent, and if Zelensky were competent, and I don’t know that he is… that war should never have been allowed to happen,’ he told reporters at the White House yesterday.
‘I went four years and Putin wouldn’t even bring it up and as soon as the election was rigged and I wasn’t here, that war started.’
He doubled down on his assertion that ‘everybody’s to blame’ for the war, as he repeated: ‘Biden could have stopped it, and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it.
‘I’m not saying that anybody’s an angel, but I went four years and it wasn’t even a question. He would never – and I told him “don’t do it, you’re not going to do it.” And it was the apple of his eye, but there was no way that he would’ve done it,’ he added.
The criticisms come amid reports from his special envoy Steve Witkoff that Putin is open to a ‘permanent peace’ deal with Ukraine.
Witkoff, who met with the Kremlin leader last week, has now claimed that the US and Russia ‘might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large’.
Trump also claimed that there were ‘millions of people de@d because of three people’.
‘Let’s say Putin number one, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky,’ Trump said during a meeting with the visiting president of El Salvador. He then doubled down on his attack on Zelensky.
‘He’s always looking to purchase missiles,’ he said dismissively of the Ukrainian leader’s attempts to maintain his country’s defense against the Russian invasion.
‘When you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war,’ Trump said.
‘You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size, and then hope that people give you some missiles.’