Donald Trump tries to clarify Ukraine comments
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump isn’t backing down from his recent claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not going into Ukraine.”
Putin, as Trump’s critics quickly pointed out, is already very much in Ukraine: Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula with armed men in March 2014. Most countries, including the U.S., still recognize Crimea as sovereign Ukraine territory.
On Monday morning, Trump fired off a pair of tweets insisting that he was talking about the world under a potential Trump administration:
When I said in an interview that Putin is “not going into Ukraine, you can mark it down,” I am saying if I am President. Already in Crimea!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2016
So with all of the Obama tough talk on Russia and the Ukraine, they have already taken Crimea and continue to push. That’s what I said!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2016
The controversy began in an interview that aired Sunday morning. ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos pressed him on a change to the GOP’s platform regarding a supply of arms to Ukraine for self-defense.
“He’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand,” Trump said of Putin. “He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”
“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Stephanopoulos interjected.
“He’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there,” Trump told Stephanopoulos. He quickly shifted toward blaming U.S. President Barack Obama for the region’s instability. “You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you’re talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime he’s going away. He takes Crimea.”
Trump’s statements garnered widespread ridicule. Some accused Trump of not realizing that Putin already sent troops into Ukraine, while others accused him of parroting Russian propaganda to justify the invasion.
In his ABC interview, Trump repeated Russia’s justification for Crimea and said he might recognize its claim to the region.
“I’m going to take a look at it,” Trump said. “But you know the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that also.”
A senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Jake Sullivan, released a statement Sunday saying the interview provided further evidence that Trump is unqualified and temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief.
“What is he talking about? Russia is already in Ukraine. Does he not know that? What else doesn’t he know?” Sullivan said.
The Trump campaign has forged a relatively soft stance against the Kremlin. The candidate himself frequently — and incorrectly — claims that Putin called him a “genius,” and the two have praised one another. Trump has also hedged on whether he would defend Baltic NATO countries if they were attacked by Russia.
On Monday, the New York Times ran a front-page story exploring Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. “It is not clear that Mr. Manafort’s work in Ukraine ended with his work with Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the article concluded.
