"I've been hearing for 20 years that if Ukraine goes to NATO, it will be a real problem for Russia. I've been hearing that for a long time. I think that's why this war started", Trump explained.

In addition, the former US president shifted some of the blame over Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Biden, who he said should not have promised Kiev to join NATO.

"Biden said the wrong things all the time, and one of the wrong things is he said Ukraine would go to NATO.... When I heard him speak, I thought: this guy is going to start a war", he noted.

Trump believes that if he had remained president of the United States, a full-scale Russian invasion would not have started at all.

"For four years, nobody even said Russia would go into Ukraine. It would never have happened. Russia was not going to attack Ukraine. As soon as I left (as president of the United States — ed.), they started lining up at the borders", Trump added. — And I thought Putin apparently — he's a good negotiator — I thought he was doing it for the purpose of negotiations. Then all of a sudden they attacked... Biden was saying the opposite of what I think he should have been saying. The things he said and still says — they're crazy".

• On June 16, it was reported that Trump promised to "address the issue" of aid to Ukraine by talking about the amount of aid before he even entered the White House as president.