Former Trump aide calls Ukraine ‘not really a country’ amid Russian military buildup at border

Ukraine is ‘split in half’, Peter Navarro says as he claims ‘we never would be having this conversation if Trump was in the White House’

Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has said that Ukraine is “not really a country” as Russia is increasing its troop presence on the border with the neighbouring country.

Mr Navarro said that the Russian military presence on the Ukrainian border was an attempt to test the resolve and willingness to intervene of US leaders.

“We never would be having this conversation if Trump was in the White House because, basically, peace through strength was a doctrine that was working with Russia, with North Korea, with China, with Iran and everything else,” Mr Navarro claimed while speaking on Newsmax on Thursday. “Right now, every dictator around the world is going to test Joe Biden, whether it’s Putin or whether it’s Xi Jinping.”

“With respect to the issue of Ukraine, I think a little history at least is useful,” Mr Navarro added.

“The Soviet Union back before Russia when it broke up contained all of Ukraine including Crimea. The country itself is not really a country because if you look at it, the western part of it, like it’s literally split in half, those are all Russian speakers,” he said, but quickly corrected himself.

“Excuse me, the eastern part is all Russian speakers,” he said. “The western part are all Ukrainian speakers. And it’s a country ... that’s been kind of at war with itself with their election system.”

Russia now has around 100,000 troops close to its border with Ukraine, leading to worries that an attack may come early next year. US intelligence has warned that Russia could invade its neighbour as soon as January, CBS has reported.

The Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times, Anton Troianovski, said earlier this week that US intelligence believes that Russia is “preparing for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops”.

He said that the Ukrainian military “would be utterly outgunned and outmatched”, but added while speaking on the podcast The Daily that there’s a “grim and determined mood” within the Ukrainian ranks.

“The soldiers on the border have made it clear that if it comes to it, they will be prepared to do what they can to make this as costly as possible for the other side,” he said.

Troianovski said Russian President Vladimir Putin has been “extraordinarily fixated on the issue of Ukraine” since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago.

Ukraine became independent when the Soviet Union fell, and “for people of Putin’s generation, this was an incredibly shocking and even traumatic moment,” as out of all the republics the Soviet Union lost when it was disbanded, Ukraine was “probably the one most valuable to Moscow”, the bureau chief said.

When Mr Putin came to power a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, he tried to pull Ukraine closer to Russia. But by 2014, it became clear that he had failed when the country went through the Maidan Revolution when citizens protested after the country’s president withdrew from a deal that would have moved the country closer to the European Union and the West.

The protests forced out Viktor Yanukovych, a president friendly to Russia, and led to a government more aimed at strengthening ties to the West. But Mr Putin didn’t view it as a revolution by the people, but as a “coup engineered by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies meant to drive Ukraine away from Russia”, Troianovski said.

He sent troops to Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, and “fomented a separatist war in Eastern Ukraine” that has so far led to the deaths of more than 10,000 people, according to Troianovski.

Volodymyr Zelensky became president of Ukraine in May 2019. Earlier this year, he started taking a much harder stance against Russia.

“He cracked down on a pro-Russian oligarch and pro-Russian media. He continued with military exercises with American soldiers and with other Western forces. He kept talking up the idea of Ukraine joining NATO,” Troianovski said of Mr Zelensky on The Daily.

“This is what Putin seems to fear the most, the idea of Nato becoming more entrenched in this region. So Putin made it clear that this was starting to cross what he describes as Russia’s red lines and that Russia was willing to take action to stop this,” he added.

The White House has said that President Joe Biden reassured Mr Zelensky during a conversation lasting more than an hour on Thursday.

“President Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s aggressive actions towards Ukraine and made clear that the US and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of a further military intervention,” the White House said.