Donald Trump, in 2017, had asked his security advisor whether US troops were in Donbas, the territory in Ukraine, claimed by Russian-backed separatists. Not only this. Sitting in front of then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, Trump had said he knew Ukraine was a corrupt country because a Ukrainian friend told him that. Trump also said Crimea was Russia and local people speak Russian. These revelations have been made by Marie Yovanovitch, who was US’s ambassador to Ukraine at that time, in her new book Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, as reported by <i>The Guardian</i>.
The book is yet to be launched.
Follow live updates of Russia-Ukraine war
Yovanovitch said Trump’s words were surprising to hear at that meeting as those were from one head of state to another but the final embarrassment was when Trump asked whether US forces were there in Ukraine.
The question put the ambassador to a deep thought about whether Trump was suggesting something or whether he did not have a clear picture of who was fighting whom.
“Either way, it was disconcerting that he did not seem to know where we had our troops – his troops – deployed. I could only imagine what the Ukrainians were thinking,” Yovanovitch wrote in a book titled Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir, as reported by The Guardian
An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia,” she added.
The book comes as Ukraine is fighting a war against Russia over the past two weeks and Trump is questioning US President Joe Biden for Russia’s attack.
Yovanovitch wrote in her book that she got the impression that Trump had come to attend the meeting considering Ukraine as a ‘loser country’ and weaker than Russia. But after meeting Poroshenko, who was not only physically as imposing as Trump, but also a billionaire businessman, Trump might have been a little surprised.
“Trump’s obsequiousness toward Putin was a frequent and continuing cause for concern,” the former envoy wrote.
As the war is raging on, Trump is using the conflict as his call against Putin. On Saturday, addressing a rally in Florence, Trump said the US does not have anybody to talk to Putin. “We don’t have anybody to talk to him [Putin]. You had somebody to talk to him with me. My personality is what kept us out of war,” he said.
