The President made the case last Friday at a dinner in Quebec, Canada, while meeting with other economic powers for the G-7 meeting, a diplomatic official told the news website.
The U.S. and its allies heavily sanctioned Russia for annexing the peninsula of Crimea — which has crucial ports on the Black Sea — in early 2014 as Ukraine was left weak and feeble by a brutal civil war.
Russian is the most commonly spoken tongue in southern Ukraine — including Crimea — and eastern regions along the border. President Vladimir Putin argued he was protecting the peninsula’s citizens, many of whom were either Russian or spoke the language, despite accusations he violated Ukraine’s sovereignty.
But Trump wondered why the embattled nation should hve had it in the first place.
"Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world," he said at the dinner, according to BuzzFeed News.
Russia’s support of forces in eastern Ukraine, with which it has stronger cultural ties, and its backing of the Assad regime in Syria were cited as reasons why the Kremlin was booted from what was then the G-8 summit in 2014.
Trump raised eyebrows last week when he suggested several times that Russia should be readmitted to group of economic world leaders to be the G-8 again.
“Why are we having the meeting without Russia being in the meeting?” he asked last Friday. “Russia should be in the meeting, it should be a part of it.”
Instead of blaming Putin and Russia for their actions in Crimea, he’s blamed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for inaction.
“Obama should not have allowed that to happen,” he said in an interview with Fox News this week.
He said he’d have far more success dealing with the Russian strongman — and that’d be easier for him to deal with Putin if he was sitting next to him at a G-8.
“I’m not for Russia, I’m for the United States, but as an example, if Vladimir Putin were sitting next to me today instead of one of the others and we were having dinner I could say, ‘Would you do me a favor? Would you get out of Syria? Would you do me a favor, would you get out of Ukraine?’ ” Trump said.
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