Donald Trump has seemingly blamed Ukraine for its war with Russia, saying the nation should “never have started it.”
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Riyadh met for the first high-level talks between the two countries in regards to ending the war.
However, despite being the country that was actually invaded by Russia, Ukraine was not invited to the talks, something that President Volodymyr Zelensky labelled a “surprise.”
HIs words seemed to have riled Trump, who seemed to blame Ukraine for allowing the war to last for three years.
Speaking to the press on Tuesday, the US president hit out at Zelensky for demanding a seat at peace negotiations.
After claiming the talks were “going very well,” he said: “But today I heard ‘Oh we weren’t invited!’
“Well, you’ve been there for three years, you should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it.”
Trump went on to say Ukraine “could have made a deal,” before claiming he could have made a deal “for almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished.”
His comments have been roundly slammed, including by former defence secretary Ben Wallace.
He labelled the comments as being “straight out of the Kremlin talking points.”
It is almost three years since Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, sparking the war between the two nations. This came eight years after Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea.
Trump has suggested it is unlikely that Ukraine will get back the land claimed by Russia.
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