WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday described Russia’s assault on Ukraine as “Biden’s war” — before saying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky started the conflict.
“The War between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening,” the president posted on Truth Social.
“President Putin, and everyone else, respected your President! I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR, BUT AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia, April 11, 2025. via REUTERS
Trump added that Biden and Zelensky bore responsibility for “allowing this travesty to begin,” claiming “there were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting,” without giving examples.
In the Oval Office hours later, Trump claimed that Biden failed to prevent Putin’s invasion in February 2022 because the 46th president let oil prices rise too high, empowering the energy-based Russian economy to afford the war.
“All you had to do is lower oil prices. If you lowered oil prices — Biden kept the prices so high because he made it impossible to get it — if you lowered oil prices, you would have never had the war,” Trump said.
“Biden could have stopped it, and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it. Everybody’s to blame.”
When asked if he had spoken to Zelensky about his offer to purchase American missiles, Trump groused: “I don’t know. He’s always looking to purchase missiles, you know?”
President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hug as they say goodbye at the Memorial Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war with photos of killed soldiers, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023. AP
“Listen,” the US president went on, “when you start a war, you’re going to know that you can win the war, right? You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.”
Friday marks two months since special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz held initial talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia as part of Trump’s initiative to end the war, as he frequently promised on the 2024 campaign trail.
There have since been multiple meetings between Washington and both Moscow and Kyiv, albeit separately, which have resulted in Ukraine agreeing to Trump’s proposed full cease-fire.
However, Russia continues its attacks, killing 32 civilians attending Palm Sunday services in Sumy, Ukraine.
Trump, who has repeatedly called for Russia to “stop the killing” in Ukraine, called the Sumy strikes “a horrible thing” while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.
“But that is the past,” the president acknowledged on Truth Social Monday. “Now we have to get it to STOP, AND FAST. SO SAD!”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talks with President Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, February 28, 2025. JIM LO SCALZO/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Further, Trump said Sunday that Putin’s full-scale invasion “wasn’t even a question” during the 45th president’ administration, though the war has been ongoing in Ukraine’s easternmost regions since 2014.
“You take a look at Putin, I’m not saying anybody’s an angel, but I will tell you, I went four years and it wasn’t even a question — he would never [invade Ukraine] and I told him, ‘Don’t do it, you’re not going to do it.’ And it was the apple of his eye, but there was no way that he would have done it,” the president told reporters.
Trump’s latest comments on the Ukraine war came after an earlier post raging against a “60 Minutes” interview with Zelensky that aired Sunday, during which the Ukrainian leader expressed worry that the US is no longer “our strategic strong partner.”
“I don’t doubt that the people of America are with us, but in a long war, many details are forgotten. In Europe, everyone fears that the United States may drift away from Europe,” he said. “I think without the United States, we will suffer great losses, human and territorial, so I wouldn’t like to consider that.”
“But this is our destiny, our land, our life, one way or another, we will end this war.”
Trump called the episode, which also featured a story on opposition to the US in Greenland, “FAKE News.”
“I just finished watching 60 Minutes, the FAKE News Show that was scandalously responsible for REMOVING a terrible and incompetently delivered answer, by failed Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris, to an interview on 60 Minutes, just prior to Election Day, and putting in its place a completely different answer to a completely different question, in order to make Kamala look ‘coherent,’” he said, referencing an edited interview with the former vice president ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“Now tonight, with two separate but highly inaccurate stories about ‘TRUMP,’ they’re at it again. The people at CBS Fake News just don’t get it!”