Former United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday said Russian President Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine on his watch, taunting Joe Biden for his way of handling crisis with Russia as Moscow recognized two Ukrainian separatist regions’ independence.
Trump suggested “he would have figured out a way to prevent Putin from moving troops into breakaway provinces of Ukraine,” according to NY Daily News, without further details on how he would do so.
“If properly handled, there was absolutely no reason that the situation currently happening in Ukraine should have happened at all,” Trump was cited as saying.
“I know Vladimir Putin very well and he would have never done what he is doing now during the Trump Administration, no way!”
He also referred Biden’s response to Putin as “weak,” who will soon announce new sanctions on Russia.
“The weak sanctions are insignificant relative to taking over a country and a massive piece of strategically located land,” Trump cited as saying in an email statement.
Putin recognized the separatist regions, the Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LNR), late Monday in a rambling, fact-bending discourse on European history.
“Russia has become very, very rich during the Biden Administration, with oil prices doubling and soon to be tripling and quadrupling,” Trump said, adding: “Now ... oil prices are going higher and higher.”
“Putin is not only getting what he always wanted, but getting, because of the oil and gas surge, richer and richer,” Trump said.
Russia is a major energy producer and the tensions over Ukraine have brought wide swings in volatile energy prices, on top of the inevitable risks of a broader conflict.
The specter of war on Europe’s eastern flank had flared on Monday, sending oil prices to a seven-year high, after Putin ordered troops into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
The U.S. and its European allies started to announce harsh new sanctions in response, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warning that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would now be denied certification to start operating.
