Ukraine is in the EU’s “backyard” and solving the ongoing crisis should be considered its responsibility, a close associate of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, Richard Grenell, believes.
Grenell, who held several senior diplomatic posts during Trump’s first tenure and is now widely regarded as his “envoy” and likely pick for the Secretary of State, should the Republican win the elections, made the remarks in an interview with German tabloid Bild on Friday. Among other things, the diplomat suggested Ukraine was largely the EU’s “responsibility” and not Washington’s.
“It’s in your backyard. If there was a war in Mexico, we would do most, if not all, of the job. And we certainly wouldn’t ask the Germans for help if there was a war in Mexico,” Grenell stated.
“There were no wars in Europe during Donald Trump’s time in office,” he pointed out, insisting that the continent had fared better during the previous president's administration.
Grenell also criticized the incumbent, Joe Biden, for his apparent lack of any effort to engage in diplomacy with Russia or talk to President Vladimir Putin.
“Biden has not spoken to [Putin] in three years. I think talking to people is a tactic. Not the goal, not the solution – but it gets us there,” he suggested.
Grenell has been rather vocal about the Ukrainian conflict lately, floating a proposal earlier this month on how exactly the hostilities could be brought to an end. The diplomat said Ukraine should not become a member of NATO any time soon, and that transforming the country into a federation of sorts with more autonomous regions could be the key to ending the hostilities.
“Autonomous regions can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but you got to work through those details,” Grenell stated during a Bloomberg News roundtable.
The proposal received a cold response in Moscow, with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissing it as an attempt to re-imagine the long-defunct 2014–15 Minsk Agreements. The deal, which had provided a roadmap out of the conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass, was ultimately revealed both by Kiev and its Western backers to be a mere ruse to buy time for arming Ukraine.
“Where were you, Rick, when the Minsk agreements dedicated to exactly this were on the table of the international community, and Russia did its best in support of them and called for finding a form of federalization of Ukraine to preserve its integrity?” Zakharova wrote in a Telegram post.