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Clinton: Trump’s rhetoric on Russian Federation raises national security concerns

I said Russian Federation will not go into the Ukraine, now I said that.

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When Thomas Roberts of MSNBC asked Trump, “Do you have a relationship with Vladimir Putin?” And most papers covered what I said accurately.

The attempted clarifications left much unclarified. “I have supported lethal aid to Ukraine and believe we should help our allies resist efforts to change borders by force”.

THE FACTS: Putin did go into Ukraine.

An adviser to Donald Trump criticized United States policy toward Russian Federation in a July trip to Moscow, the Huffington Post reported Tuesday.

Ukraine’s foreign minister tweeted a response to Trump’s online clarification today, saying he looks forward “to tough actions to stop this push [by Russian Federation into Ukraine] and to reverse it, of course including Crimea”.

United States Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump offered a muddled explanation of his views about the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russian Federation and its continued efforts to undermine Ukraine’s control of other parts of the country, amplifying his earlier suggestion that, if elected president, he might recognise Russia’s claim and end sanctions against it. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”, Trump said during a news conference in Florida”.

Page is an investment banker who has criticized the Obama administration for “fomenting” Yanukovych’s ouster, which infuriated Putin.

Do I think Mr. Trump is terrific? No. But that is only part of the story. The referendum faced accusations of fraud after the voting. No respected global election monitors supervised the balloting. His statements amount to no more than former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – not a political naïf – has been saying ever since the invasion: “Nobody in the West has offered a concrete program to restore Crimea”.

Last September, he traveled to Kiev and told the Ukrainians that their war is “really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us”. And the world community nearly universally panned the annexation.

Trump added: “And as far as the Ukraine is concerned, it’s a mess”.

Trump had earlier unnerved NATO member nations by questioning the long absolute United States commitment to defend any member of the Atlantic alliance should it be attacked by Russian Federation.

Some diplomats see the trip as part of Moscow’s search for friends within the European Union to undermine sanctions over the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In response, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has beefed up its presence in member states bordering Russian Federation, out of fear of further aggression. “It would be really nice if we got along with Russian Federation and others that we don’t get along with right now and wouldn’t it be nice if we teamed up with Russian Federation and others, including surrounding states and maybe North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and we knocked the hell out of ISIS and got rid of these people?”

Trump’s seeming fondness for Putin has anxious critics in both parties. Here’s a third, barely three months ago, in an obscure newspaper called the New York Times. And he told Bloomberg News in March that US sanctions on Russian Federation have hurt his business.

The Republican presidential nominee highlighted the importance of improved relations with Putin and Russian Federation by affirming that, since Russian Federation was also in possession of nuclear weapons, it was in the United States’ best interest to stabilize the relationship.

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Stephanopoulos: “You’ve never spoken to him on the phone?” President Obama, after all, made it a mission during his first term to do just that. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov