US ex-president doesn’t say if he would back Ukraine in war with Russia

Former President Donald Trump has refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine to prevail in its war with invading Russia.

“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” he said while participating in a town hall moderated by CNN's Kaitlan Collins at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on May 10, according to CNN.

He added that “I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people”.

Asked to choose a side he would prefer to win, Trump again demurred. “I want everyone to stop dying,” he said before promising to end the war in “24 hours.”

Ultimately, Trump fell back on two familiar topics: demanding Europe “put up more money” in support of Western goals and speaking meekly about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When a journalist asked if Trump considered the Russian president a war criminal, he said: "I think it should be discussed later."

"If you say he’s a war criminal it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make a deal to get this thing [the war – ed.] stopped," Trump said.

“He made a tremendous mistake,” Trump said of Putin, before adding, “He is a smart guy.”

The mistake, Trump said, “was going in” to Ukraine – something, the former president added, that would not have happened if he were still in the White House.