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.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden was an aggressive proponent of military aid to President Volodymyr Zelensky's troops. Biden maintained that there would be no American "boots on the ground" in Ukraine, but now-Vice President JD Vance was highly critical of Biden's Ukraine policy and argued that the U.S. had nothing to gain from helping the war-torn country. And some MAGA Republicans even accused Biden of being a neocon.

But the isolationist tone that U.S. President Donald Trump had in the past has been replaced by much more interventionist policies, from Venezuela to Greenland.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on January 29, retired U.S. Army Col. Jonathan Sweet and national security/foreign policy journalist Mark Toth warn that Trump's policies may be creator a "forever war" in Europe.

"A poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in December revealed that 75 percent of Ukrainians 'rejected a proposed peace plan that would involve the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Donbas,'" Sweet and Toth explain. "The harder Russia pushes back, the harder the Trump Administration appears to come back and lean on Ukraine. It is just a matter of time before Trump will again accuse Zelensky of 'not wanting peace' and being an 'obstructionist.' Russia wants to make a deal with the U.S. — only to secure that deal, Trump needs Zelensky to stop resisting."

Sweet and Toth continue, "For now, the sticking point is the Donbas. But what if Ukraine agreed to withdraw from the region? Would Russia end the war? Probably not. It will just lead to the next bone of contention."

Sweet and Toth warn that Putin is showing no signs of backing down on Ukraine.

"Trump has the cards to end the war, but those cards need to be played against Russia and not Ukraine," Sweet and Toth argue. "He must coerce Russia to stop attacking, give up their territorial aspirations for the Donbas, and accept a European military peace-keeping force in Ukraine. That will likely require military force. It begins with a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over western Ukraine, sufficiently arming Kyiv to defeat Russian forces in Ukraine, and destroying Moscow's ability to fund and sustain the war. Anything less equals a Team Trump forever war in Europe."

Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth's full op-ed for The Hill is available at this link.

Over the years, Vladimir Putin has moved from the far left to the far right. Putin was a KGB agent in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, but he later rejected communism and embraced an authoritarian form of crony capitalism as president of the Russia Federation.

Putin, now 73, is seeking to expand the Russia Federation with the invasion of Ukraine, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his troops have vigorously fought back against. But in his February 13 column for the Washington Post, Never Trump conservative George Will lays out some reasons why Putin is facing a "grim future" politically.

"As the fifth year of Russia's war to subdue Ukraine approaches, Putin has learned that the past is easier to control than the present," the 84-year-old Will explains. "He has a grim future if the United States and Europe press their advantages. A much-diminished Russia occupies just 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that Kyiv controlled four Februarys ago. Europe, which has not yet even completely weaned itself from Russian energy, is at least accustoming itself to the vocabulary of military seriousness."

Will notes that Putin has little support in the European Union (EU) beyond Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"Putin's only sympathizer in the European Union, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, might now have firmer support among American authoritarians ('national conservatives') than among Hungarians," the conservative columnist writes. "Putin's 'special military operation' in Ukraine (calling it a war can mean imprisonment) has lasted longer than Russia's involvement in World War II. By now, Putin has surely defined success down: a negotiated armistice that provides Ukraine with security 'guarantees' even more gossamer than those of the infamous 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances…. In the first half of 2025, the most stolen item was the Russian Constitution, which guarantees free speech and forbids censorship."

Will adds, "Hence, a Russian joke: 'We read (George) Orwell for his reflection of reality, and the constitution as a beautiful utopia.' Negotiate accordingly."

Former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev, who once headed Kazakhstan’s security services, said both Kazakhstan and the Kremlin are in possession of an incriminating video of U.S. President Donald Trump, among other “compromising material,” Ukraine’s Kyiv Post reports.

Mussayev on Friday spoke with Ukraine’s Espreso TV program “Studia Zakhid,” where the Kyiv Post reports he “reiterated a claim he has expressed publicly for years – namely, that there is a Kremlin file with compromising video material from Trump’s stay at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in 2013” for the Miss Universe pageant. According to Mussayev, Kazakhstan is also “in possession of that same kompromat.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) both have a copy of the file, “including possession of film footage, presumable of a sexual nature,” according to the report.

Mussayev told Ukraine’s “Studia Zakhid” the files “were used by former chairman of the National Security Committee Karim Masimov during a meeting with Secretary of State [Rex] Tillerson in the United States.” Tillerson met with Masimov at the U.S. State Department in October 2017, according to Tillerson's public schedule. Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018.

Mussayev said Kazakhstan obtained the video because a Kazakh oligarch named Bulat Temuratov owned, and still owns, the Ritz Hotel. According to Mussayev, Temuratov is “close to [Kazakh] President [Nursultan] Nazarbayev.”

“Whatever was filmed at the Ritz Hotel belonged to Kazakhs,” Mussayev explained.

“Russian special services used camera surveillance in the rooms. In addition to the Russians, it got through to the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan via Bulat Temuratov,” Mussayev added.

Mussayev has long claimed Trump was “groomed in 1987 as a potential Soviet asset,” according to the Kyiv Post.

In Feb. 2018, Mussayev wrote on Facebook Trump is in the category of “ideally recruitable people."

"I have no doubt that Russia has kompromat on the U.S. president, that over the course of many years the Kremlin has been promoting Trump to the post of president of the main world power," Mussayev wrote.