Trump and Biden Clashed Over Ukraine During First Debate
Trump rejected Putin's ceasefire offer, but Biden claims his opponent will allow Putin to destroy Ukraine
On June 27, two U.S. presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, clashed over foreign policy and Russia’s war against Ukraine during the first televised debates. The Ukrainian topic turned out to be really important for both along the Israeli war in the Palestinian sector of Gaza. How to end the war in Ukraine and whether European nations are contributing enough to the effort against Russia's invasion dominated their discussion of this topic. The opponents laid out differing views on Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
What did Biden say?
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the Biden administration has backed Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. During the debates, Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” as he did several times before.
"He has killed thousands and thousands of people," Biden said, showing his compassion to victimized Ukraine.
Biden backed his policy towards Ukraine and warned the American voters that Trump might allow Russia to succeed in its war and then march on Europe.
"Go ahead, let Putin go in and control Ukraine, and then move on to Poland and other places. See what happens then! I have never heard of such foolishness. He has no idea what the hell he's talking about," Biden confronted Trump.
Biden claimed that his foreign policy regarding Ukraine is a success because he has rallied leaders from more than 50 countries worldwide in a coalition to help Ukraine. However, the current President didn’t mention his administration's hesitations about providing the Abrams battle tanks, F-16 multirole jets, and ballistic ATACMS rockets, as well as restrictions on the use of American weapons to strike Russian territory, which limited the chances of Ukrainian forces to succeed on the battlefield.
“This is a guy who wants to pull out of NATO,” Biden told the television audience, mentioning Trump.
In this context, Biden didn’t mention all of Trump’s phrases about possibly pulling out of NATO. In fact, Trump this way threatened those alliance members who didn’t contribute their ‘fair share,’ the recommended 2 percent of their GDP. After Russia invaded Ukraine, they woke up and began contributing their fair share.
What did Trump say?
As many times before, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, ironically, the “greatest salesman ever.“ As a salesman, Trump said this regarding the Ukrainian leader’s military aid requests, which Biden always approves. However, Trump didn’t mention that the most recent package of aid totaling $61 billion was delayed for six months by the Republican lawmakers in U.S. Congress, not Biden. As we know, the delay led to the weakening of Ukrainian defense capabilities and allowed the Russian invasion forces to make new land grabs.
Former President Donald Trump blamed Biden for this war and suggested Russia never would have attacked Ukraine if he had been in office.
“It was horrible shame, the most horrible moment in history of our country [election of Biden]. When Putin saw that, he said: ‘You know what? I think we will go in [into Ukraine], Trump said.
He doubled down on his greater eligibility for the White House.
"If we had a real president, the president that was respected by Putin, he would have never invaded Ukraine … He knew not to play games with me,” Trump said, referring to Putin.
When asked about the recent Putin’s ceasefire offer, Trump, however, said the conditions laid out by the Russian leader to end the war in Ukraine “are not acceptable.” This is an unexpected turn because Trump was Putin’s admirer before. For example, he called Putin’s tactics in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “very savvy.” But now, by rejecting Putin’s peace proposal, Trump sent a signal to the Kremlin and his American voters that he won’t easily do what Putin asks for.
Similarly to Biden, Trump also expressed compassion for the Ukrainians who fight for survival. Meanwhile, Trump he accused his political opponent of not caring about Ukraine. Trump mentioned that the Ukrainian people are getting slaughtered by the prolonged war.
“Ukraine won’t win this war. They loose very many people. And they loose beautiful cities with golden domes. And this is very sad,” Trump said.
To support his claim about alleged Biden’s indifference even more, Trump repeated his accusation that Biden, being the U.S. vice-president, blackmailed the government of Ukraine into firing the prosecutor general to shield from criminal inquiry the Ukrainian company where his son Hunter worked at that time. At that time the chief Ukrainian prosecutor, whose name is Viktor Shokin, was blacklisted by the European Union, the U.S., and other Western countries because he refused to tackle corruption. Many Western countries pushed for his resignation, not only Biden.
During the debates, Trump repeated his promise to "settle" the war in Ukraine if elected, even do it before the inauguration. But he didn’t explain his plan. His promise was in the context that there was no war under his previous watch, and Biden caused ‘endless wars’ by his policy failures regarding Israel and Palestine, concerning Iran, and by the chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
Extra
More about the Trump’s team ideas to end the war in Ukraine I wrote here. And here I explained the recent Putin’s ceasefire offer.