The United States should stop providing aid to Ukraine unless “Europe begins to equalize” the situation, said the Republican candidate for the US presidency, Donald Trump, in an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, Kyiv Independent reports.
Donald TrumpPhoto: José Luis Villegas / AP / Profimedia
Trump has said he will not commit to providing military aid to Ukraine if he wins this year’s presidential election, and his influence within the Republican Party has otherwise contributed to the more than six-month-old block on $61 billion in US aid promised by Washington to Ukraine.
“If Europe will not pay, why should we? They are much more affected. We have an ocean between them, they don’t,” Donald Trump told Time magazine.
Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the United States has given Ukraine more aid than any other country. The support given to Kiev by Washington so far is worth more than 67 billion dollars, of which 43 billion dollars represents military aid.
Europe has allocated a total of more than $96 billion in military, humanitarian and financial support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German institute that tracks aid to Ukraine.
Between the summer of 2023 and the spring of 2024, Europe’s allocations to support Ukraine “constantly exceeded those of the US,” the Kiel Institute notes.
Time magazine also addressed in the interview the attitude of Donald Trump towards the Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked him why he did not demand the release of the reporter from the Wall Street Journal, Evan Gershkovich, who is still imprisoned in Moscow.
“I think because I have so many other things that I’m dealing with,” Trump replied, adding that if he’s elected president, “I’m going to get him released.”
Trump also declined to say whether he would help Taiwan in the event of an invasion by China, but instead indicated that Beijing must “understand that things like this cannot be done so easily.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview given to the American Fox News channel on April 25 that Ukraine hopes to continue working with Washington regardless of the outcome of the presidential elections that will be held in November this year in the USA.
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