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Russian President Vladimir Putin stated he agreed with Donald Trump’s declare that the battle in Ukraine wouldn’t have ever even begun if he had not misplaced the 2020 election and was serving as president when the carnage started, as a substitute of former President Joe Biden.
“I can affirm that,” Putin stated on the tail-end of a press conferece that befell Friday night after the pair met for a summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska.
Trump made the assertion a number of occasions on the marketing campaign path, and continued saying it after he took again the White House. Trump has confronted pushback on the declare, in addition to on claims that Ukraine instigated the battle’s inception and the Biden administration didn’t do issues that might have thwarted it from starting within the first place.
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President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin communicate throughout a information convention at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Picture/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
“I would like so as to add another factor,” Putin stated, as the 2 heads of state supplied remarks to the press, in keeping with a translation of the Russian president’s tackle. “I would wish to remind you that in 2022, over the past contact with a earlier administration, I attempted to persuade my earlier American colleague that the scenario shouldn’t be introduced to some extent of no return when it could come to hostilities and I stated it fairly immediately again then that it is a massive mistake. At present, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president again then there could be no battle – I’m fairly positive that it could certainly be so. I can affirm that.”
Earlier in his tackle, Putin lamented that bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia, previous to Trump, had “fallen to the bottom level for the reason that Chilly Conflict,” and highlighted the truth that there have been no summits between the U.S. and Russia over the past 4 years.

Trump shakes palms with then-President Joe Biden at Trump’s inauguration within the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Pictures)
“That is not benefiting our counties and the world as an entire,” Putin stated, including that it was “obvious that ultimately [U.S. and Russia] needed to amend the scenario to maneuver on from the confrontation to dialogue.”
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In the meantime, Putin praised Trump for “his attempt to get to the crux of the matter and to know this historical past,” referring to the backstory surrounding the battle. He known as the dedication “treasured.”
The Russian president additionally remarked throughout his tackle that he hopes this new chapter of foreign diplomacy underneath Trump will “assist us rebuild and foster mutually useful and equal ties at this new stage, even throughout the hardest situations.”
“General, me and President Trump have constructed an excellent business-like and reliable contact, and have each purpose to imagine that shifting down this path we will come to the tip of the battle in Ukraine,” Putin stated Friday.

President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025. Putin is in Alaska on the invitation of Trump in his first go to to a Western nation since he ordered the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of hundreds of individuals. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
The optics of Trump’s assembly with Putin had been slammed by critics, who in contrast the scene Friday to when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Trump on the White Home.
The notorious assembly noticed Zelenskyy publicly argue back-and-forth with Trump and different prime leaders within the administration, as President Trump criticized the Ukrainian president for his strategy to ending the battle.
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“Biden might’ve stopped it, Zelenskyy might’ve stopped it, and Putin ought to’ve by no means began it,” Trump stated in April in regards to the battle in Ukraine.