Former US ambassador to UN says Trump ‘barely knew where Ukraine was’

‘Its just not accurate to say that Trump’s behaviour somehow deterred the Russians’

John Bolton, who served as Mr Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 and previously as the US ambassador to the UN, told Newsmax in an interview that his former boss “barely knew where Ukraine was”.

“He once asked John Kelly, his second chief of staff, if Finland were a part of Russia,” the former ambassador said of the single-term US president on Monday. “The fact is that he barely knew where Ukraine was.”

Mr Bolton argued earlier in the interview that Russia had not been deterred from acting aggressively towards its neighbours, and in particular Ukraine, because of Mr Trump.

“Its just not accurate to say that Trump’s behaviour somehow deterred the Russians,” Mr Bolton told Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt. “I think the evidence is Russia didn’t feel that their military was ready.”

Mr Schmitt said earlier in the interview: “If there is something to be said, though, about the simple fact that there was not aggression during the four years, I mean, you were part of that administration as well. And there was not aggression from Russia and they they waited him out, it seems, and made a move”.

Referring to a gas pipeline project between Russia and Germany, Mr Bolton argued: “We did not sanction Nord Stream 2. We should have. We should have brought the project to an end.”

“We did impose sanctions on Russian oligarchs and several others because of their sales of S-400 anti aircraft systems to other countries. But in almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it saying we were being too hard,” Mr Bolton alleged.

Mr Trump, who famously described Belgium as a “beautiful city”, issued a statement on Monday claiming responsibility for Nato member countries increasing their spending on defences, after Russia invaded Ukraine without reason.

The widespread invasion last week comes after eight years of conflict on Ukraine’s border with Russia, who annexed the southern peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

Figures from the Nato security alliance show that defence spending began to rise following that action by Russia – and two years before Mr Trump entered the White House.

Mr Trump also defended Mr Putin during a 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, and faced his first impeachment trial for threatening to withhold military equipment for Ukraine, who refused to investigate US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.