Donald Trump has marked the first victory in his campaign to reclaim the US presidency by reiterating a boast that he will quickly end the Russia-Ukraine conflict when he returns to the White House.
Speaking after securing a record margin of victory in Iowa’s Republican caucuses on Monday night, Trump claimed that neither the Ukraine crisis nor the Israel-Hamas war would have happened if he were still the commander-in-chief. He expressed confidence that he will bring Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the negotiating table to hammer out a peace deal.
“The Ukraine situation is so horrible, the Israeli situation is so horrible, what’s happened, and we’re going to get them solved,” Trump told supporters in Des Moines, the Iowa capital. “We’re going to get them solved very fast… I know President Putin very well, I know Zelensky well. I’m gonna get them in, we’re gonna get it solved very quickly.”
Trump defeated the rest of the Republican field by around 30 percentage points in the Iowa race, more than doubling a record that had stood since 1988 and securing his status as the leading candidate to win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. He has repeatedly claimed that he will resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours when he returns to the White House.
Trump has also claimed that the “weak” leadership of his successor, President Joe Biden, led to the Ukraine conflict and the Hamas attack that triggered Israel’s war in Gaza. He vowed to prevent such tragedies by achieving “peace through strength.”
“It should have never happened, would have never happened,” Trump said of the Ukraine crisis. “Now you have all that death, far greater than people understand. The numbers are far, far greater than anybody would even think possible. You’re going to find that out in the years to come.”