Putin backs Trump claim that Ukraine war wouldn’t happen if he were president

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he agreed with Donald Trump’s claim that the war in Ukraine would not have ever even begun if he had not lost the 2020 election and was serving as president when the carnage began, instead of former President Joe Biden.  

“I can confirm that,” Putin said at the tail-end of a press conferece that took place Friday evening after the pair met for a summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. 

Trump made the assertion multiple times on the campaign trail, and continued saying it after he took back the White House. Trump has faced pushback on the claim, as well as on claims that Ukraine instigated the war’s inception and the Biden administration failed to do things that could have thwarted it from beginning in the first place.

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President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin speak during a news conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

“I’d like to add one more thing,” Putin said, as the two heads of state provided remarks to the press, according to a translation of the Russian president’s address. “I’d like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with a previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that the situation should not be brought to a point of no return when it would come to hostilities and I said it quite directly back then that it’s a big mistake. Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the president back then there would be no war – I am quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that.”

Earlier in his address, Putin lamented that bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia, prior to Trump, had “fallen to the lowest point since the Cold War,” and highlighted the fact that there have been no summits between the U.S. and Russia over the last four years.

Trump shakes hands with then-President Joe Biden at Trump’s inauguration in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

“That’s not benefiting our counties and the world as a whole,” Putin said, adding that it was “apparent that sooner or later [U.S. and Russia] had to amend the situation to move on from the confrontation to dialogue.”

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Meanwhile, Putin praised Trump for “his strive to get to the crux of the matter and to understand this history,” referring to the backstory surrounding the war. He called the commitment “precious.” 

The Russian president also remarked during his address that he hopes this new chapter of foreign diplomacy under Trump will “help us rebuild and foster mutually beneficial and equal ties at this new stage, even during the hardest conditions.”

“Overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact, and have every reason to believe that moving down this path we can come to the end of the conflict in Ukraine,” Putin said Friday. 

President Donald Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on the tarmac after they arrived at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025. Putin is in Alaska at the invitation of Trump in his first visit to a Western country since he ordered the 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands of people.  (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

The optics of Trump’s meeting with Putin were slammed by critics, who compared the scene Friday to when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Trump at the White House. 

The infamous meeting saw Zelenskyy publicly argue back-and-forth with Trump and other top leaders in the administration, as President Trump criticized the Ukrainian president for his approach to ending the war.

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“Biden could’ve stopped it, Zelenskyy could’ve stopped it, and Putin should’ve never started it,” Trump said in April about the war in Ukraine.