former US president Donald Trump praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, calling his decision “great” to recognize the independence of the two breakaway provinces of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.
(Also read: Blinken cancels meeting with Lavrov due to Russian recognition of separatists).
“Here we have a guy who is very smart. I know him very well. Very, very well,” Trump said of Putin during an interview with a conservative radio show.
According to the former Republican president, his first reaction after seeing the head of the Kremlin recognize the independence of Ukraine’s breakaway provinces was to think: “This is great.”
“Putin now says, ‘It’s independent,’ a big part of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to come in as a peacemaker,” Trump said, joking that a military force like the one deployed by Russia should be sent to the US border with Mexico to control irregular immigration.
(We recommend: Satellite images show deployment of Russian troops near Ukraine)
The former US president, who during his tenure always claimed to be in good harmony with Putin, defended that the current situation would never have occurred with him in the White House.
“I think he sees this opportunity. I knew that I had always wanted Ukraine. She used to talk to him about it. I told him: ‘you can’t do it, you’re not going to do it’, but I could see that he wanted it. (…) We used to talk about it in depth, “she…
