U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office on February 28, 2025

President Donald Trump is blaming Ukraine for being attacked by Russia in President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war against the sovereign nation.

In a rambling and wide-ranging “Fox & Friends” interview on Tuesday, the President covered a lot of ground, including declaring that it would be unfair to Russia to allow Ukraine to become a part of NATO.

“It can’t be NATO because that’s just not something that would ever ever happen. He couldn’t. They couldn’t do that. If you were Russia, who would want to have your enemy, your opponent, sitting on your line? You don’t do that,” Trump said.

Trump then falsely claimed, “It was always thought that Ukraine was a, sort of a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe — and it was, it was a big, wide buffer — everything worked out well until Biden got involved.”

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Ukraine was promised future entry into NATO at an undetermined date, back in 2008. Finland borders Russia and is a member of NATO. Trump also did not say why there needed to be a “buffer” between Russia and Europe.

Trump also expressed that, he believes, Ukraine will have to give up land to Russia.

Asked what the European leaders thought about “land swaps,” which may or may not include Russia giving back land it took illegally, but no actual Russian land, Trump replied: “While they understand — look, everybody can play cute and this and that, but, you know, Ukraine’s gonna get their life back.”

“They’re gonna stop having people killed all over the place, and they’re gonna get a lot of land,” he claimed, not mentioning that that land belongs to Ukraine.

Then he accused Ukraine of attacking Russia, and suggested they were the provocateur.

“But this was a war, and Russia is a powerful military nation, you know, whether people like it or not, it’s a powerful nation,” Trump said. “It’s a much bigger nation.”

“It’s not a war that should have been started. You don’t do that. You don’t take on a nation that’s ten times your size and you know, military experts — look, look, here, if it wasn’t for the greatest military equipment. We make the greatest military equipment in the world, and we gave them— So, you know, whatever they took — probably a lot of money, too — but they had tremendous, you know, they had the Patriot missile, which is the best in the world.”

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“All the equipment, we make the best equipment in the world by far. Everyone else is like, nothing. So we gave them a lot of equipment. Now, with that said, the Ukrainian soldiers were brave as hell. Cause’s fighting a force that’s much, much bigger. Superior, much more powerful.”

Critics denounced Trump’s claims.

“For the umpteenth time, Trump blames Ukraine for starting the war. Trump can never be trusted. He works for Putin,” wrote podcaster and former GOP congressman Joe Walsh.

“Really crystallizesTrump’s world view that bigger nations can bully smaller ones just because they can,” wrote communications expert Eric Koch.

Watch the video below or at this link.