Francis Tushchek, Staff Writer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US President Joe Biden\u2019s inept handling of the tensions between Russia, Ukraine and NATO has led to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, President-elect Donald Trump told a press conference on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had Washington not offered Ukraine the prospect of joining the US-led military bloc, war could have been avoided, Trump believes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington\u2019s desire to see Ukraine in NATO, despite Moscow\u2019s legitimate concerns, is what has triggered the conflict, the president-elect told journalists, adding that he believes that Biden \u201cbroke\u201d<\/em> a deal that America had with Russia on how far the US-led military bloc could expand. \u201cMoscow has repeatedly stated even before President Vladimir Putin came to power that it does not want to see NATO in Ukraine,\u201d<\/em> Trump stated, adding that it \u201chas been written in stone.\u201d<\/em> Biden nonetheless insisted that \u201cthey should be able to join NATO,\u201d<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The president-elect also said he\u00a0\u201ccould understand\u201d<\/em>\u00a0how Russia was\u00a0\u201cfeeling about\u201d<\/em>\u00a0having a foreign military bloc\u00a0\u201cright on their doorstep.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u201cThere were a lot of mistakes made\u201d<\/em>\u00a0in negotiations between Moscow and Washington during the period preceding Russia\u2019s military campaign against Kiev, he said.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I heard the way that Biden was negotiating, I said: \u2018you\u2019re going to end up in a war,\u2019 and it turned out to be a very bad war,\u201d<\/em> Trump said, adding that the ongoing conflict could still escalate even further and become \u201cmuch worse than it is now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The president-elect referred to the ongoing conflict as a \u201cdisaster\u201d<\/em> that \u201cshould have never happened\u201d<\/em> and called it \u201cBiden\u2019s fiasco.\u201d<\/em> He also vowed to \u201cstraighten up\u201d<\/em> the situation, while still admitting it will be \u201ca tough one.\u201d<\/em> According to Trump, it would have been much easier to prevent the conflict from breaking out back in 2022 than to settle it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Answering one of the journalists\u2019 questions, Trump said that he might need up to six months after taking office to help Moscow and Kiev reach a deal. Previously, he had repeatedly vowed to end the conflict in 24 hours. He still expressed his hope that it could be done \u201clong before six months.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In late December, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that Biden offered him to delay Ukraine\u2019s membership in NATO at the organization\u2019s 2021 summit in Geneva. For Moscow, Kiev\u2019s accession to the US-led bloc was unacceptable \u201cwhether it\u2019s in one year or ten years,\u201d the Russian leader said at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Francis Tushchek, Staff Writer US President Joe Biden\u2019s inept handling of the tensions between Russia, Ukraine and NATO has led to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, President-elect Donald Trump told a press conference on Tuesday. Had Washington not offered Ukraine the prospect of joining the US-led military bloc, war could have been avoided, Trump believes….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pacificislands.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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