On Saturday night, former President Donald Trump called for an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine and attacked former Vice President Joe Biden for handling it poorly.
Biden can still “end this tragedy without getting Americans snared into a gruesome and very bloody war,” he said. If the invasion continues, he said, it will lead to another world war.
Putin would not have started a war if he were still president, Trump told a crowd in South Carolina. Similar assertions have been made by Trump since the Ukraine-Russia conflict began.
“If I were in Office, this deadly Ukraine situation would never have happened!” Trump said on Feb. 24.
“This could lead, by the way, this could lead to World War III,” Trump said. “I see what’s happening. Because if you think Putin is going to stop, it’s going to get worse and worse. He’s not going to accept it and we don’t have anybody to talk to him.”
In opposing the US issuing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Sen. Marco Rubio warned the US against plunging into a third world war.
In response to Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the US imposed a series of harsh economic sanctions with the aim of crippling Russia’s critical cash reserves and cutting off its ability to access financial institutions.
Last week, Biden announced what might be the most crippling sanction: a ban on Russian energy imports like oil. “We will not be subsidizing Putin’s war,” Biden said.
Russia is a major petroleum producer, and its energy resources contribute more than $500 million per day to its government’s revenues, as Insider’s Mattathias Schwartz notes.
In addition to about $14 billion in emergency humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, the House of Representatives passed a huge spending package on Wednesday. Nearly half of that spending is for defense and military expenditures.
