President Donald Trump has mostly pinned Vladimir Putin's invasion on his predecessor, calling it "Joe Biden's war," but he added criticism for President Barack Obama for starting it all with the "giving away" of Crimea in 2014.
"That is when it really began, when Obama gave it away," Trump said in a televised phone interview Tuesday morning.
Trump told Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy that, from Putin’s side, getting back Crimea or getting Ukraine into NATO is off the table in any long-term peace deal. He warned the “fake news” media that if those concessions become permanent, the blame would lie not with him but with past Democrat administrations under Obama and Biden.
"The war started over NATO and Crimea and they wanted Crimea back," Trump said. "That was given – not a shot fired – by President Obama in perhaps the worst real estate deal I've ever seen."
Trump, while also trying to broker peace in the Middle East, said the Crimea giveaway was similar to Israel allowing the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza along its border on the eastern Mediterranean coast.
"There's been a couple of them: I would say the Gaza strip was a pretty bad one, too, given by Israel so they'd have peace," Trump continued. "So they gave away a big percentage of their oceanfront property to have peace. How did that work out? Not so good.
"Crimea is the apple of Ukraine; it is so beautiful. And Obama gave it away. Nobody ever mentions it."
Trump noted his critics in the media are assailing him for leveraging Ukrainian land to Putin and Russia to broker peace, but the giveaways of Crimea and Gaza are not his fault.
"If I did that, the fake news would be writing about me day and night for years," Trump said. "He gave it away. He demanded that they let it go. Russia took it like candy from a baby.
"It was really Obama's, that was pure and simple Obama's fault, what a terrible thing he did to that country. They lost the heart and soul of Ukraine.
"It was so unnecessary to do that."
According to Trump, Ukraine’s demand to reclaim Crimea angered Putin, and its request to join NATO was “insulting,” factors that he said led to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine under Biden in February 2022.
"They asked for it and shouldn't have asked for it: It was insulting," Trump said. "They could have asked for other things."
It all led to "tremendous hostility," he added.
"The people of Ukraine were mortified; they gave it, and didn't have to: Not a shot fired," Trump said. "They took the most valuable piece, surrounded on four sides by ocean, just a little passage to get you on the mainland.
"Beautiful piece of property. Why the heck did he do that to them? There is great hostility, and maybe rightfully so."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.