Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Friday that “the crisis in Ukraine” might have been prevented if Donald Trump was in power at the time, saying he was ready to talk with the new US president about the conflict.
Trump has long claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened under his watch, but Friday marked the first time Putin suggested the same thing – while also repeating Trump’s false claim that the 2020 US election was “stolen.”
“I can’t help but agree with (Trump) that if his victory had not been stolen in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022,” Putin told a Russian TV channel, presumably referring to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine which he himself had ordered in February 2022.
Trump has said in the past that he would end the war in Ukraine in one day, but then gave his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg 100 days to find a solution.
The new administration has so far not unveiled any concrete plan for how to achieve peace in Ukraine, but Trump said this week that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had told him he wants to make a deal and suggested Putin should also want to find a solution.
“So, I think Russia should want to make a deal. Maybe they want to make a deal. I think from what I hear, Putin would like to see me. We’ll meet as soon as we can. I’d meet immediately. Every day we don’t meet soldiers are being killed in a battlefield,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.
Putin seemed amenable to meeting Trump, saying Russia was “always open to this.”
“As for the issue related to negotiations – we have always said, and I will emphasize this once again, that we are ready for negotiations on the Ukrainian issue,” the Russian leader told the Russian TV channel. A day earlier the Kremlin said it was waiting on “signals” from Washington.
The statement from Putin came a day after Trump made a threat of new sanctions against Moscow while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos.
However, Putin questioned that warning on Friday, saying such a move would hurt the American economy. “He is not only a smart person, he is a pragmatic person, and I can hardly imagine that decisions will be made that will harm the American economy itself,” Putin said.