Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday confirmed the commonly held view, echoed by U.S. President Donald Trump, that Trump’s successor/predecessor in the White House, Democrat Joe Biden, was the driving force in the Russian leader’s decision to escalate a long-simmering territorial dispute at the Ukraine border into full-fledged war.
Putin said the conflict in Ukraine could have been prevented had Trump been in the White House in 2022. He also said Moscow was currently ready for talks with the U.S. on a broad range of issues.
In an interview with Russian state television, Putin praised Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who is focused on U.S. interests.
“We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current U.S. president,” Putin said. “I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”
Trump also has said repeatedly he wouldn’t have allowed the conflict to start if he had been in office because his leadership projected strength while Biden’s put his incompetence on full display—most notoriously with the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. […]
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