President Donald Trump put some blame on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for choosing to fight Russia rather than make a deal. In April of 2022, Zelensky had nearly completed negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin when members of NATO pushed Kiev to fight rather than sign the agreement.
“Look, Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful. He shouldn’t have done that because we could have made a deal and it would have been a deal that would have been — it would have been a nothing deal,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday.
Trump may be referring to the negotiations that nearly ended the Russian invasion of Ukraine within the first two months. Under that deal, Russian forces would have withdrawn from Ukraine, including the Donbas, if Kiev would never join NATO and committed to some demilitarization.
During the interview, Trump indicated that he would have taken that deal. “I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided that I want to fight,” he said. Trump went on to say his predecessor, Joe Biden, did a “horrible job” by allowing the war to start.