Ben Wallace has accused US president Donald Trump of echoing “propaganda lines” from the Kremlin.
The former defence secretary’s comments came after Trump appeared to blame Ukraine for starting war against Russia. In a press conference on Tuesday, the US president criticised Kyiv’s negotiation skills and suggested the war in Ukraine could have been “settled very easily”.
After an extraordinary meeting between senior American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, Trump said of Ukraine: “They’ve had a seat [at the table] for three years and a long time before that.
“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Touting his own negotiation skills, Trump also said he was “more confident” about a peace deal after Tuesday’s talks, attended by US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Asked about Ukraine’s absence from the talks, Trump said: “I’m very disappointed. I hear that, you know, they’re upset about not having a seat.
“Well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily.”
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He also called for elections to take place in Ukraine as he took aim at president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “approval ratings”.
The US president said: “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down to 4 per cent approval rating.”
He added: “If Ukraine wants a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people have to say it has been a long time since they had an election?
“That’s not a Russian thing, that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”
Wallace was asked about Trump’s comments in an interview with LBC on Wednesday morning.
Responding, the former defence secretary said: “Well, I know Mar-a-Largo is quite close to Disney World, but that was pure Disney in both sort of facts and reality.
“And I think what you were actually hearing is Donald Trump‘s realisation that if you don’t have skin in the game, you don’t get a say, as much as you think you do.
“I mean, I saw them all sitting around that table in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia.”
He added: “I’m sure they did a lot of interesting things in four hours. But fundamentally, if you want to get a peace deal in Ukraine, you’re going to need the people who are going to have to put skin in the game to make it happen.”
Asked how Trump’s comments will go down within Russia, Wallace added: “I think the Kremlin have been pretty happy since day one.
“If the White House is repeating those sort of propaganda lines that, you know, Ukraine started the war, etc, then of course they’ll be really happy that people are rewriting history.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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