Democrat California Sen. Adam Schiff struggled Friday on CNN’s “The Lead” to say whether President Donald Trump deserves credit for attempting to create peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska Friday to negotiate a potential end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Before Trump announced that no official deal was reached, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Schiff about the president’s attempt. Tapper also pointed to how former President Joe Biden’s strategies on Ukraine had failed.
“Look, I’m all for any attempt to bring an end to the bloodshed, but what would have been, I think, a far more successful strategy for the President was to have Ukraine’s back, to be leaning into providing material and military support to Ukraine, to give Ukraine the resources it needed to take out the trains carrying fuel going to the front, which have continued to feed the war,” Schiff said.
The meeting between Putin and Trump comes after the president continually called for peace and warned Putin about sanctions that could occur if negotiations did not begin. (RELATED: Putin Claims Ukraine War Wouldn’t Have Started If Trump Were President Instead Of Biden)
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With the conflict originally beginning under the Obama administration, a full-scale war broke out under Biden as his administration provided billions to Ukraine for aid and support. Schiff went on to say he believes the Trump administration has given up military support and NATO membership for Ukraine.
“So I agree, the Biden approach didn’t succeed, and I think because it was too slow to provide enough material support to Ukraine to give Ukraine that military advantage it needed,” Schiff added. “But what the President has done since taking office has been to undercut that. We have a bipartisan bill, as you know, strongly bipartisan, to sanction Russia. The President hasn’t allowed that legislation to move forward, and the President’s own threat of imposing sanctions he withdrew on, at least until now. So I don’t think this is the successful negotiating posture Ukraine deserves.”
In the lead-up to the war, Biden issued a series of sanctions against two Russian banks and Russian debt. The former president also signed an executive order prohibiting U.S. individuals from new investment, trade, or financing in “the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine.”
A day before Russia officially struck Kyiv, Biden announced that he would allow economic sanctions to be reimposed on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, vowing to “take further steps if Russia continues to escalate.” In addition to the sanctions, Biden condemned Russia for invading Ukraine, saying that the U.S. “and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way.”
“The world will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said at the time.
Putin later responded to the U.S., presumably Biden and NATO, that Russia’s response to threats or impediments would be “immediate” and “lead to consequences you have never seen in history.”
Since reentering the White House, Trump has pushed for peace between the two countries as he vowed he would during his presidential campaign.
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