KYIV — Crimea went to the Russians in 2014 and it will remain with Russia, U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday.
“Crimea will stay with Russia,” Trump told the magazine, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “understands that.”
“Everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time. It’s been with them long before Trump came along,” the U.S. president said.
“This is a war that should never have happened. I call it the war that should have never happened,” Trump said.
Earlier this week, Trump ranted against Zelenskyy for refusing to ever recognize Crimea as Russian, claiming Ukraine should have fought for it in 2014 and blaming Zelenskyy for prolonging the war.
“Well, Crimea went to the Russians. It was handed to them by Barack Hussein Obama, and not by me,” Trump said in the Time interview. “With that being said, will they be able to get it back? … [the Russian’s] have had their submarines there for long before any period that we’re talking about, for many years. The people speak largely Russian in Crimea,” he said.
“This wasn’t given by Trump,” he said. “Would it have been taken from me like it was taken from Obama? No, it wouldn’t have happened,” Trump told Time, claiming that if he were president in 2014, Russia would have never taken Crimea.
In 2014, before he ran for the U.S. presidency, Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine as “so smart.” In a interview with Fox News, Trump said Putin has “done an amazing job of taking the mantle.”
“You look at what he’s doing. And so smart,” Trump told Fox. “When you see the riots in a country because they’re hurting the Russians, okay, ‘We’ll go and take it over.’ And he really goes step by step by step, and you have to give him a lot of credit,” Trump said.
Last week, U.S. State Secretary Marco Rubio introduced a peace proposal that included recognition of Crimea as Russian territory as a step toward peace, an official familiar with negotiations told POLITICO. Trump has been pushing Ukraine for concessions to “get the peace deal by 100 days in office,” which is next week, this official said, speaking under grant of anonymity.
The U.S. hasn’t confirm that aspect of the ceasefire proposal.
“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian territory,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “But if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”
Trump’s statements were criticized by Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar community, indigenous people of Crimea, who in February 2014 clashed with a covert Russian army in Simferopol during large protests, while Ukrainian troops were blocked by the Russian army on their bases in Crimea.
“The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people declares that the only legitimate way to end the Russia-Ukraine war, establish a guaranteed and just peace in the region, is the deoccupation of Crimea and other occupied territories of Ukraine and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,” the Mejlis said in a statement Thursday.
“Any other options threaten consequences in which the suffering of the people, including the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, due to violations of their fundamental rights, may reach catastrophic proportions,” the Crimean Tatar representative body in exile added.
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