Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Russia was “acting in good faith” and blamed the US for the drawn out conflict.
Kennedy made the comments during an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Briefing with Steve Scully”.
He said Russian President Vladimir Putin has “repeatedly said yes” to various efforts to end the country’s longstanding conflict with Ukraine.
“In fact, he negotiated, two times he agreed to agreements,” Kennedy said. “He agreed to the Minsk Accord, and then he agreed in 2022 to an agreement that would’ve left Ukraine completely intact.”
The Minsk agreements were two international agreements in 2014 and 2015 that were meant to end fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Putin claimed those agreements “do not exist” just before he launched the full scale invasion of Ukraine in February.
It is not clear what 2022 agreements Kennedy is referring to, but he blamed the US for its failure.
“It was us who forced [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky to sabotage that agreement. It was already signed,” Kennedy claimed. “So, you know, the Russians were acting in good faith.”
Kennedy’s Previous Comments on the War
Kennedy has repeatedly criticized American’s involvement in Ukraine.
At a campaign event in New Hampshire earlier in the week, he suggested the conflict is the “creation of a relentless mentality of foreign domination” on the part of the U.S.
“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation,” Kennedy said. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.”
Since the start of the invasion, the US has provided about $40 billion in assistance to Ukraine, according to the State Department. About $22 billion of that is in physical equipment from Department of Defense stockpiles.
The seemingly unending amount has garnered criticism from Republicans in Congress who say the funding is unsustainable.
