Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly that he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he was elected president again. The United Nations ambassador for Russia said the criminally convicted Republican candidate’s assertion was absurd.
When asked to respond to the claim from the presumptive Republican nominee, Vassily Nebenzia told reporters recently that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”
He said that would happen after he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin – the Russian dictator and Trump’s political benefactor. And he has continued repeating the false claim on the campaign trail.
During the recent television debate with President Joe Biden, Trump claimed, “If we had a real president, a president that knew — that was respected by Putin … he would have never invaded Ukraine.”
Nebenzia said the war could have ended in April 2022 in Istanbul when Russia and Ukraine were “very close” to an agreement. Moscow invaded its neighbor two months earlier on February 24, 2022, although Russia falsely insists its “special military operation” began in 2014 after clashes in Ukraine’s east resulted in Moscow seizing the Crimea Peninsula.
The Russian ambassador blamed Ukraine’s Western backers for blocking the April 2022 peace deal and telling Kyiv to keep fighting Russia.
While meeting in Switzerland last month, nearly 80 countries called for the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine to be the basis for any peace agreement to end the war. But some key developing nations did not join in and Russia did not attend the conference.
Nebenzia pointed to Putin’s offer on June 14 to “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and start negotiations if Kyiv begins withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounces plans to join NATO.
President Zelenskyy, who has vowed not to give up any territory, rejected what he called an ultimatum by Putin to surrender more land.
Trump has never offered any idea of how he intended to resolve the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Many experts believe that because Putin helped Trump illegally seize the presidency in 2016, if the felon and adjudicated rapist was re-elected in 2024 he would stop all aid to Ukraine and potentially assist Russia’s effort to re-colonize Ukraine.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces thwarted their drive to the capital. Much of the fighting has been focused in Ukraine’s south and east, where Moscow illegally seized four regions, although it does not fully control any of them.
But Ukraine is still struggling to stabilize parts of its front line after desperately needed military assistance from the United States was delayed for months due to obstructions by the “Putin Caucus” of the Republican Party – before being approved in April.
Russia took advantage of the Ukrainian weapons shortage – thanks to Trump’s direct interference – to launch an offensive and has made gains.
