Kyiv Post has fact-checked US President Donald J. Trump’s Wednesday statement that Ukraine was responsible for the Russo-Ukraine War.
The US leader made the comments to reporters in the White House. He was responding to questions about recent meetings between Russian and US officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for top-level discussions on bilateral issues including possible ways to end the Russo-Ukraine War.
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What Trump said:
“I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it’s going very well. Today I heard (from Ukraine) ‘Oh, woah, well, we weren’t invited!’ (to the US-Russia talks). Well you’ve [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] been there for three years. You should of ended it, three years ago. You should have never started it. You could have made deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land – everything. Almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed. And no city would have been demolished. And not one dome would have been knocked down. But they (Ukraine’s national leadership) chose not to do it that way.”
Practically all sources except Russian state-controlled media, but including mainstream media, politicians, and independent observers in both the US and Europe, blame Russia for invading Ukraine and place the Kremlin decision to order its armed forces to cross international borders and attack Ukraine squarely on the shoulders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his entourage.
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Russian military acts at the outset of the war include attacks on Ukrainian border posts, missile launches into Ukrainian cities, air strikes against Ukrainian military bases and transportation hubs, and parachute drops and helicopter troop landings at objectives – all without warning, at night.
Criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an unwarranted and illegal act of war has been worldwide. Aside from all but 10 nations on Earth (including North Korea, Iran, and Belarus among others) the Pope, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice, have all have identified Putin and the Kremlin as responsible for ordering the invasion.
Trump offered no evidence for his startling claim that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war and was responsible for the death and destruction it has caused.
There has never been a viable peace deal with terms Trump described. The closest to a deal the warring sides came was when Russian and Ukrainian officials met mostly in Istanbul to discuss a possible ceasefire and peace deal. The meetings took place in Istanbul from March 2022-May 2022.
Russian terms for peace amounted to a near-total Ukrainian capitulation including Ukrainian surrender of 30% of its territory to Russia permanently, Ukrainian commitment never to join any defensive alliance and permanent Ukrainian neutrality, and near-total Ukrainian disarmament which would have left Ukraine unable to defend itself, making the Russian language a state language equal with Ukrainian, and “de-Nazification” of the Ukrainian state amounting to a purge of any official thought by Moscow to be hostile to Russia from a Ukrainian government job.
The talks failed primarily because of differences on how much terrain Ukraine might surrender to Russia, and because of Ukrainian insistence on hard security guarantees against future Russian invasion.
Russia’s first armed invasion of Ukraine began in April 2014 when Russian army and navy units took over Ukrainian government buildings and military bases almost bloodlessly in Ukraine’s southern Crimea region.
Russia-backed militia incorporating local volunteers and Russian mercenaries and army officers simultaneously attacked government institutions in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Those attacks met armed resistance. Following a mostly successful Ukrainian counter-offensive in May through July, in August, Russia committed uniformed troops to combat in Ukraine.
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