US President Donald Trump on Friday said that Crimea will stay with Russia amid the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.
Trump made the statement during a wide-ranging interview with TIME magazine.
The US leader said, “Zelenskyy understands that and everybody understands that it [Crimea] is been with them [Russia] for a long time.”
Crimea is a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine.
In 2014, Crimea was seized by Russia while Barack Obama was President of the US.
“The people speak largely Russian in Crimea,” Trump added.
“But this was given by [Barack] Obama. This was not given by Trump.”
This comes after Trump recently accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of prolonging the war by resisting peace negotiations with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
