Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump has said that he can \u201cunderstand the Russians\u2019 feelings\u201d about President Joe Biden allegedly breaking a \u201cdeal\u201d to deny Ukraine NATO membership.<\/p>\n
The incoming US President once again blamed the Biden administration for the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Discussing the causes of the war, Trump said that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO had been \u201ca major issue for Russia for many, many years\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, a big part of the problem was Russia for many, many years, long before (Russian President, Vladimir) Putin said, you could never have NATO involved with Ukraine. Now they\u2019ve said \u2026 that\u2019s been like written in stone. Somewhere along the line (US President Joe) Biden said no, they should be able to join NATO. Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep and I could understand their feeling about that,\u201d Trump told reporters on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of mistakes made in that negotiation. When I heard the way that Biden was negotiating, I said you\u2019re going to end up in a war and it turned out to be a very bad war. That war could escalate to be much worse than it is right now,\u201d he said in response to a question.<\/p>\n
Trump has previously argued that Biden should not have promised Ukraine NATO membership, claiming this was a reason for Russia starting its full-scale war.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Trump insisted that he would \u201cnot abandon Ukraine\u201d in his efforts to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy view is that it was always understood. In fact, I believe that they had a deal and then Biden broke it. They had a deal which would have been a satisfactory deal to Ukraine and everybody else. But Biden said, no, you have to be able to join NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always been, and nobody knows more about NATO than I. You know, years ago when I first started this, I didn\u2019t know too much about NATO, but I got it right anyway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine now wants to be a NATO member.<\/p>\n
In 2008, Nato had expressed support for Ukraine joining the bloc. However, NATO has not yet extended its membership to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Trump also told reporters that he wants NATO members to contribute five per cent of their GDP.<\/p>\n
\u201cNato should have five per cent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, you can\u2019t do it at two. I mean at two per cent, if you\u2019re going to have a country and a regular military, you\u2019re at four per cent. I think they\u2019re in dangerous territory. They can all afford it, but they should be at five per cent, not two per cent. I\u2019m the one that got him to pay two per cent,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re taking advantage. I\u2019m the one that got, and the (NATO) Secretary General was here two weeks ago, saying that if it weren\u2019t for me, NATO wouldn\u2019t even exist right now. Because I was raised, in countries that weren\u2019t paying their bills, at that time 28 countries, 20 of them were not paying their bills, 21 to be exact,\u201d he asserted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey weren\u2019t paying or they were paying a very small portion, and I raised over $680 billion, that was the number he gave, by saying, if you don\u2019t pay, we\u2019re not going to protect you. As soon as I said that, the money came pouring in. But Obama could have said it, other people could have said it, Bush could have said it. Nobody said it but me. I took a lot of heat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, that\u2019s a threatening statement. Well, they weren\u2019t paying their bills. I said we\u2019re not going to protect you if you\u2019re not paying the bills. So, in a true sense, I saved NATO, but NATO has taken advantage of us. And one of the problems that I have, and I\u2019ve said it openly, I said it to Ukrainian President Zelensky,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we\u2019re in. Now, whether you like that situation or not, Europe is much more affected than the United States. We have a thing called the ocean in between us. Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe? And you know, they\u2019re a similar size, a little smaller, but they\u2019re a similar size economy as the United States when you add them up. And yet Europe is in for a small fraction of the number the United States is in,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said you have to pay your bills and they all \u2014 one stood up, I won\u2019t say who, you\u2019ll probably have it because the papers \u2014 the media hated to report on it. But a Prime Minister stood up from a country, you know, a famous meeting of 28 nations with no press, he stood up and he says, does that mean if we don\u2019t pay our bill\u2026 I said, if you don\u2019t pay, you mean you\u2019re delinquent? He said, yes. I said, if you\u2019re delinquent, we will not protect you,\u201d Trump added.<\/p>\n
\u2013IANS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump has said that he can \u201cunderstand the Russians\u2019 feelings\u201d about President Joe Biden allegedly breaking a \u201cdeal\u201d to deny Ukraine NATO membership. The incoming US President once again blamed the Biden administration for the start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Discussing the causes of the war, Trump said that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-53001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/202501083295994-bTXH4D.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53003,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53001\/revisions\/53003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenftimes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}