Just a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was described as merely a “territorial dispute” that the United States should stay out of (a sentiment echoing the donald trumps), governor Ron DeSantis now tries to solve the problem – quite awkwardly – and calls Wladimir Putin a “war criminal”.
“I think he should be held accountable,” said DeSantis, who is expected by many to announce a presidential candidacy Pier Morgan in a Fox Nation interview that will air Thursday. He further argued that his earlier testimony on the war in Ukraine had been misconstrued. “Obviously Russia invaded – that was wrong,” he said, according to an excerpt of the interview Morgan shared with the New York Post. “What I mean is where the fighting is happening now, that’s this eastern border region, Donbass and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia had that,” DeSantis said, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea . “I don’t think legitimately, but they had it. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there.” He added he doesn’t think there’s “sufficient interest in us to develop more engagement” — which seemingly tempered his previous statement bust Joe Biden-Government for giving Ukraine what DeSantis called a “blank check” in support of its fight against Russia.
It seems DeSantis could play in front of his audience. DeSantis’ comments came down, downplaying the war in Ukraine and denouncing Washington’s role in the war in an opinion To Tucker Carlson, who is among the most outspoken and influential critics of US support for Ukraine. Carlson has accused the US of conspiring to trigger “regime change” in Russia and described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a very dark force” and “a destroyer”. Even DeSantis’ initial description of the war as distant and trivial – an attitude that deeply impressed the host – was almost identical to Carlson’s Believe that it is a widely ramified “border dispute”. But in his remarks to Morgan, an unreserved fan on the Ukrainian cause, DeSantis sounded more like a traditional anti-Kremlin conservative.
Or maybe the governor of Florida is reading the room; DeSantis’ comment about the “territorial dispute” to Carlson drew the ire of several factions in the Republican Party. Reportedly by Trump accused him to just “follow what I say,” a point nikki haley, another Republican presidential hopeful secondedcalling the two an “echo” of one another. Meanwhile, on the hill, Senator John Cornyn said Politico that he was “disturbed” by the comment while Senator Marco Rubio, a colleague from Florida, called in a radio interview: “Obviously, as governor, he doesn’t deal with foreign policy every day.” Senator Lindsey Graham, an early supporter of Trump’s 2024 campaign, went one step further. “Governor DeSantis, who I respect, basically takes the Chinese position when it comes to invading Russia,” the South Carolina senator said told FoxNews. “China calls this a territorial dispute. This is not a territorial dispute. This is an invasion of a sovereign democracy [Putin’s] Russia, barbaric in nature.”
