President Donald Trump wrote off a deadly Palm Sunday attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy as a “mistake”—before quickly blaming the war not on Vladimir Putin but on Joe Biden.
Ballistic missiles ripped through the busy city center on Sunday morning as residents were out enjoying the pre-Easter festival and attending church services, according to the AP. Ukrainian officials said cluster munitions exploded in midair, killing 34 people—including two children—and injuring at least 117.
Instead of condemning the strikes, Trump suggested the attack was unintentional.
“I think it was terrible and I was told they made a mistake,” he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One. “But I think it’s a horrible thing. I think the whole war’s a horrible thing.”
He then launched into a 90-second monologue about how if the 2020 election hadn’t been “rigged” and he had been president in 2022, when Russia invaded, “We wouldn’t have had the war in Ukraine.”
Even then he couldn’t bring himself to use the active voice or name the aggressors. He didn’t once say the name “Putin,” and the one time he used the word “Russia” was to describe the war as the “Russia-Ukraine situation.”
“This country would have never allowed that war to have started if I were president,” he said. “That war is a shame. Millions of people are dead that should be alive, cities are being destroyed all over Ukraine, the whole culture is gone—or very certainly very severely hurt.”
Although the war has been devastating, the death toll appears to be much lower than the “millions” that Trump cited.
The best estimates put Ukrainian troop casualties at about 80,000 and Russian losses at up to 200,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.
About 60,000 Ukrainian civilians have died or gone missing, not including more than 19,500 children forcibly deported to Russia, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Hundreds of thousands of people have also been injured and millions have been displaced.
Asked to clarify his comment that the Sumy attack was a “mistake” in the sense that it was “unintentional,” Trump said, “They made a mistake—I believe it was—look you gotta ask them.”
“This is Biden’s war. This is not my war,” he added during another 40-second rant that, again, did not include the words “Russia” or “Putin.”
“That war would have never taken place,” he repeated. “But remember this: This is Biden’s war.”
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