Former President Donald Trump speculated that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a project to rebuild a Soviet empire that had been “full of love.”
Trump made the remarks on Sunday in a radio interview with the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. He was asked about the unfolding crisis in Ukraine, which Russia invaded in late February.
“He’s got a big ego,” Trump said of Putin. “Again, I know him very well … I understand he’s gotten rid of a lot of his generals.”
He speculated that the Russian president likely felt “cornered” and could do “unspeakable” things to make progress in the invasion, which has faced fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Trump appeared to be raising similar concerns as the US intelligence officials who have spoken of the possibility of Russia turning to chemical weapons or expanding its attacks on civilians.
Trump also speculated that Putin had likely been motivated by a desire to rebuild the Soviet Union, which included Ukraine and other now independent states in eastern Europe and Asia.
“They wanted to rebuild the Soviet Union,” Trump said, adding: “That’s what this is all about to a large extent. And then you say, what’s the purpose of this?
“They had a country. You could see it was a country where there was a lot of love, and, you know, we’re doing it because somebody wants to make his country larger or he wants to put it back the way it was when actually it didn’t work very well.”
After the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Ukraine voted to become an independent republic.
As part of the USSR, Ukraine was subjected to political repression. As many as 4 million people in Ukraine died in a man-made famine created by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s.
Though the Soviet Union made some striking scientific advances and spread some prosperity, it brutally punished political dissent and by the early 1990s poverty was widespread. One of Trump’s predecessors, Ronald Reagan, famously described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”
Trump visited Russia before the collapse of the Soviet Union, making a trip to Moscow in 1987 to explore a possible hotel deal.
Trump has long attracted controversy for his remarks about Putin. In late February he described Russia’s authoritarian leader as a “genius” and “very savvy” for declaring two regions in eastern Ukraine independent as a pretext for launching the invasion.
In recent weeks Trump has condemned Russia’s aggression, describing the killing of Ukrainian civilians as a “holocaust” in one interview, but he has not criticized Putin personally.
He has also claimed that were he still the president, Russia would not have launched the invasion. In Sunday’s interview he pointed to his decision as president to provide enhanced military aid to Ukraine.
But critics including Fiona Hill, his former Russia advisor, have said Trump’s hostility toward NATO, divisive policies, and threat to withhold military aid from Ukraine may have encouraged Putin’s aggression.
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