President Donald Trump suggested in an interview that aired Thursday night that Ukraine should not have fought when Russia invaded it. "Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal." Trump has argued that Zelenskyy should have made a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid the war, a stance he reiterated in the Fox News interview. "I could have made that deal so easily, and Zelenskyy decided that 'I want to fight,'" Trump said. Trump went on to compare the number of tanks each country had, emphasizing that Russia had more. "You don't fight those," Trump said.
U.S. President Donald Trump indicated that both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky share the blame for the Ukraine-Russia war in an interview segment with Fox News released on Jan. 23. The U.S. president, who most recently met Zelensky in Paris in December, criticized his Ukrainian counterpart for resisting Russia at the start of the invasion instead of cutting a deal. "Zelensky... shouldn’t have allowed this to happen either. He’s no angel," Trump said. "I could have made that deal so easily, and Zelensky decided that 'I want to fight,'" he commented, adding that Ukraine has been fighting against a "much bigger entity."
Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity an estimated 850,000 Russian soldiers and 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the onset of the war. "These are human beings that are just being slaughtered on this battlefield by the millions. They've already died, and the cities — the cities are like demolition sites," he said in an interview that aired Thursday on "Hannity." The 47th president criticized former President Joe Biden for "allowing" the war to start, claiming his predecessor’s energy policies made Putin richer. "Putin shouldn't have done it, too. I mean, I'm not blaming only what — Putin shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have done it, and it has to stop," Trump said.
