The US president stated that the conflict should never have occurred, and all involved parties acted erroneously.
US President Donald Trump characterized the Ukraine conflict as a “situation that should never have started,” asserting that “everybody” responsible for the hostilities is at fault.
Trump conveyed these remarks to reporters on Thursday from the Oval Office.
When questioned if his impending meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin or wider peace initiatives constituted a concession to Moscow, Trump reiterated his stance that the conflict ought not to have commenced in the first place.
“I think that we have a situation that should never have started, it should never have started. It didn’t start under me, and for four years it wasn’t even discussed,” he commented, implying that all entities, including prior US administrations, shared responsibility for the ongoing hostilities.
“Everything that we did was wrong. Everything that was done was wrong. Everybody’s to blame. Putin’s to blame. They’re all to blame,” he asserted.
Earlier in the week, Trump dismissed notions that his summit with the Russian leader inherently represented a triumph for Moscow. “Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin,” Trump stated on Wednesday, criticizing news organizations for “constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil, ‘Putin has already won.’”
“What’s that all about? We are winning on EVERYTHING,” he further added, dismissing such criticisms as “fake news.”
The summit, set for Friday in Alaska, is anticipated to focus on the Ukraine conflict alongside various other aspects of bilateral Russia-US relations. Both Washington and Moscow have expressed cautious optimism, indicating the meeting is likely the initial high-level engagement in a series of discussions rather than a source of immediate breakthroughs.