WASHINGTON — President Trump backtracked Friday on his earlier claim that Ukraine “started” its three-year-old war with Russia –– but insisted that Moscow “could have been talked out of” invading its western neighbor.
“I’m telling you, [former President Joe] Biden said the wrong things. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky said the wrong things,” Trump, 78, told Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show.”
“They got attacked by somebody that’s much bigger and much stronger — which is a bad thing to do, and you don’t do that — but Russia could have been talked out of that so easily.
“That should never have been a war, and all those dead people shouldn’t be dead, and all those cities shouldn’t be demolished right now,” Trump added after the host pressed the president repeatedly on whether Kyiv — as Trump claimed Tuesday — began Europe’s deadliest conflict in 80 years.
“Russia attacked, but they shouldn’t have let him attack, because they wouldn’t have attacked if they, if you had people to do what they were doing,” repeated the president.
“And I will tell you, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could have been talked out of that so easy, but they didn’t know how to talk.”
Later in the sitdown, Trump suggested he would talk to Putin about releasing thousands of Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and taken to Russia during the fighting.
Trump unleashed a barrage of verbal attacks against Zelensky beginning Tuesday, telling reporters that Ukraine “should have never started” the war with Russia.
On Wednesday, Trump wrote a lengthy post on Truth Social labeling Zelensky a “dictator” and calling for new elections in Ukraine.
The US president continued to swipe at Zelensky in the Kilmeade interview, saying: “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you. He’s been there for three years. He makes it very hard to make deals.”
The tiff began as US-Ukraine tensions rose and American diplomats met their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday — without a Ukrainian presence.
Zelensky expressed frustration about being left out of the talks and then said Trump is living in a Russian “disinformation” space.
The Ukrainian president also rejected a deal presented by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that wanted 50% of the country’s rare-earth minerals, leading to fury from the White House.
“[Bessent], a very good guy, actually went there, and they couldn’t even come close to getting a deal done. And frankly, I wish he didn’t go there, waste all of his time like that, but they couldn’t get close,” Trump told Kilmeade of the first rare-earths deal presented.
“They met, right? And then when [Bessent] wanted to get it close, he was unable to meet [Zelensky] again. So, just a wasted trip, a dangerous trip to him. I didn’t like it that he was doing it because, you know, he’s a good man. I didn’t want him to put himself under danger, because I had a feeling something like that would happen.”
Zelensky said he rejected the first deal because he didn’t see enough “security guarantees” offered by the US in exchange for the billions in mineral rights.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told journalists Catherine Herridge in an interview released Thursday night that the “security guarantee” was the US “investment.”
The US presented Ukraine with a new rare-earths offer late Thursday, with Trump’s special Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg due to leave Kyiv after three days of meetings Friday.
