Former President Donald Trump called Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine a “holocaust” during a Wednesday interview.
During a wide-ranging interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, the two discussed the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine, on which Trump said, “This is a holocaust. This is a horrible thing that’s happening. You’re witnessing and you’re seeing it on television every night.”
The fighting in Ukraine has already seen dozens of civilians injured and killed. In one incident, a Russian armored vehicle driver appeared to intentionally swerve to run over and crush a fleeing civilian car. The Ukrainian side has also raised concerns that the Russian side may be using potentially illegal weapons, such as cluster bombs and thermobaric explosives.
On Sunday, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan announced he intends to open an investigation into potential Russian war crimes committed during its invasion of Ukraine.
Trump also said Wednesday the conflict in Ukraine could be resolved quickly if both sides worked out a deal, but said the Russian side first has to stop attacking and killing Ukrainians.
“They have to stop killing these people,” Trump said. “They’re killing all of these people, and they have to stop it, and they have to stop it now.”
In a Feb. 22 interview with radio show hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been “pretty savvy” to declare two separatist areas of eastern Ukraine as sovereign and then send troops across Ukraine’s borders under the pretense of peacekeeping in the region, without eliciting a response from President Joe Biden.
“This never would have happened with us,” Trump told Travis and Sexton last week. “Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, ‘I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,’ he used the word ‘independent,’ ‘and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace. You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.”
During his interview with Bartiromo on Wednesday, Trump said, “They don’t respect the United States and the United States is like, I don’t know, they’re not doing anything about it.”
Trump also predicted China has been emboldened to invade Taiwan, based on the U.S. response so far to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
“They’re seeing that our leaders are incompetent, of course they’re going to do it,” Trump said. “This is their time. They did nothing on Ukraine, they do nothing.”
