WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he understands the Russian feeling with NATO being on their doorstep.
“You 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’ve said … that’s 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,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
“There were a lot of mistakes made in that negotiation. When I heard the way that Biden was negotiating, I said you’re 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,” he said in response to a question.