London (AP) – Joe Biden said in his first interview since he left the White House that the pressure of President Donald Trump so that Ukraine gives territory to Russia is equivalent to a “modern appeasement”, a term with historical connotations that refers to a failed effort to stop the annexations of Nazis territory in Europe in the 1930s.
In statements issued on Wednesday, Biden commented on the “Today” program of BBC Radio 4 that Trump’s claims about acquiring Panama, Greenland and Canada have generated distrust in Europe.
“What president speaks like this?” Biden said. “We are not like that. Ours is freedom, democracy, opportunity, not confiscation.”
He also said it was a “difficult decision” to leave the US presidential career in 2024 four months before the elections to allow former vice president Kamala Harris to challenge Trump. However, he added that making the decision before, as some critics have suggested, “would not have imported.”
The term appeasement refers to the efforts of former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s to mitigate Adolf Hitler’s movements of annexing land in Europe, something that failed to prevent World war II.
Trump has been dismissed for a long time the war in Ukraine as a waste of lives and money from US taxpayers. At the beginning of his presidency, Trump ordered a pause in American help to Ukraine, then resume it. Last week, the two countries signed an agreement that gives US access to the vast mineral resources of Ukraine, an investment return, Trump suggested, which could pave the way for more help in the United States.
He has also said that Crimea, a strategic peninsula on the Coast of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine and was illegally anxious by Russia in 2014, “will remain with Russia.”
Biden expressed concern that relations between the United States and Europe are eroding under Trump’s mandate, with NATO members reconsidering whether they trust the United States.
“Europe will lose confidence in the certainty of the United States and the leadership of the United States,” Biden told the BBC. The leaders of the continent, he added, ask themselves: “‘Can I trust the United States? Are they going to be there?’”
Of special concern, said Biden, was the government’s proposal to allow Russia to maintain part of the Ukrainian territory in an effort to reach a peace agreement that would end the fighting.
“It’s modern appeasement,” Biden said.
Biden said Trump’s diatribe against Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the Oval office in February was “unworthy of the United States.”
“I don’t understand how they can’t understand that there is strength in alliances,” Biden said Monday about Trump’s government.
When asked about Trump’s triumphant celebration of his first 100 days in office, Biden replied that he will let the story judge him.
“I see nothing that has been triumphant,” he said.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
