US funding for Kiev has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and enriched Ukrainian oligarchs, the ex-president’s son claimed
The fighting between Russia and Ukraine has to end in talks, and in order to persuade President Vladimir Zelensky’s government to negotiate, Washington must stop sending money to Kiev, the eldest son of former US President Donald Trump has said.
Donald Trump Jr. was asked the conflict during his appearance on the Timcast IRL podcast on YouTube on Friday.
The 46-year-old said: “Cut off the money. It’s the only way you get them [Ukraine] to the table, right?”
The result of the $111 billion in military and economic assistance that Washington has provided to Kiev since February 2022 has been to “kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, half of whom were probably indifferent to some of the politics cause they were ethnically Russian anyway,” he argued.
“We’re literally creating the oligarch class of billionaires in Ukraine with whatever is being siphoned off… while they send young men to die as cannon fodder on the frontlines because they couldn’t care less,” Trump Jr. said.
Despite all the Western aid, the Ukrainians “were never winning, they were probably never going to win” against Russia, he added.
If his father Donald Trump returns to the White House after the election in November, he will simply tell the government in Kiev: “Hey, you got like one more month of this and if you’re not at the table it’s done,” the ex-president’s son said.
“Guess what, Zelensky wouldn’t have a chance if we shut it down, so he’d come to the table and they [Moscow and Kiev] would come up with something,” Trump Jr. predicted.
On Friday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby acknowledged that the assistance that the US has been providing to Ukraine “has now ground to a halt.”
The announcement came as the Biden administration’s attempts to push through a $106 billion ‘national security package,’ which includes $60 billion for Kiev, continues to face staunch resistance from hardline Republican lawmakers, who have demanded stricter controls on the southern US border in exchange for approving the bill.
READ MORE: Zelensky plays ‘pensioners will die’ card in bid to unlock US aid
Earlier this week, Zelensky again urged the US politicians to unblock the aid, claiming he is now being forced to choose between paying pensions to 11 million people or buying weapons for troops on the frontline. “We simply must pay” the pensioners “because the elderly people will die” otherwise, he said.
