Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he will end the Russia-Ukraine war if he wins the November presidential elections, an assertion dismissed by his Democratic rival Kamala Harris who said the former US president would “just give up”.
Trading barbs with Vice President Harris on Tuesday at their first presidential debate in Pennsylvania ahead of the US general elections on November 5, Trump said the war would have never started had he been the president.
“I’ll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I’m president-elect, I’ll get it done before even becoming president,” Trump, 78, said in response to a question during the debate.
Asserting there was no threat of war in the four years he was president from 2017 to 2021, Trump said, “I know (Russian President Vladimir) Putin very well. He would have never — and there was no threat of it either, by the way, for four years — gone into Ukraine and killed millions of people when you add it up…”
Trump blamed the Biden-Harris Administration for not preventing the war in Ukraine and said, “If I were president, it would have never started.” The former president asserted that he wanted the war to stop and claimed that millions were being killed in it.
“I want to save lives that are being uselessly people being killed by the millions. It’s the millions. It’s so much worse than the numbers you’re getting, which are fake numbers,” he said.
“I know (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship. They respect me, they don’t respect (incumbent President Joe) Biden,” he said.
“How would you respect him (Biden)? He hasn’t even made a phone call in two years to Putin. He hasn’t spoken to anybody. That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president if I win when I’m president-elect,” Trump said.
Disagreeing with him, Vice President Harris said, “I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that’s not who we are as Americans.” Harris said she met Zelenskyy and shared “American intelligence about how he could defend himself” a few days before the Russian invasion and went to NATO’s eastern flank to Poland and Romania days later, bringing 50 countries together to support Ukraine in its “righteous defence”.
“Because of our support, because of the air defence, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country,” she said.