Putin agrees with Trump there would have been no conflict in Ukraine under Trump instead of Biden

ST. PETERSBURG. June 19 (Interfax) - U.S. President Donald Trump is right when he says there would have been no conflict in Ukraine if he had been the president before the conflict started, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

"He has repeatedly said there would have been no war if he had been the president. I believe he is right about this as well," Putin said at a meeting with the heads of international news agencies.

Putin recalled one of his latest phone calls with former U.S. President Joe Biden, on whose watch the special military operation in Ukraine began, and said he "told him that things should not be allowed to get to the point of conflicts, armed conflicts."

"Everything should be resolved peacefully, and the current Ukrainian administration should be forced to meet the demands of its citizens residing in the southeast, stop the genocide of the Russian-speaking population, and stop breaching human rights there, which the previous administration constantly talked about," Putin said, citing his conversation with Biden.

"By the way, I told him you think that now all this will be solved so easily. Yet time may pass and it will turn out that it would be better not to do what you are pushing the situation into," he said.

"Indeed, maybe, if Trump had been the president, maybe, this conflict would have not happened," Putin said. "This is quite possible," he said.