Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Wednesday that Russia has been “acting in good faith” in various efforts to end the war in Ukraine and placed blame on the U.S. for the 16-monthlong conflict.
Kennedy said in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Briefing with Steve Scully” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “repeatedly said yes” to negotiations.
“In fact, he negotiated, two times he agreed to agreements,” Kennedy said. “He agreed to the Minsk Accord, and then he agreed in 2022 to an agreement that would’ve left Ukraine completely intact.”
The Minsk agreements were two separate international agreements in 2014 and 2015 that sought to end fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Fighting never ended entirely, and Putin claimed that the agreements did “not exist” shortly before launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February.
It’s not immediately clear what 2022 agreement Kennedy is referring to. However, the long-shot Democratic candidate accused the U.S. of tanking the negotiations in Wednesday’s interview.
“It was us who forced [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky to sabotage that agreement. It was already signed,” Kennedy claimed. “So, you know, the Russians were acting in good faith. … So, no, I think we’re the ones who have not been acting in good faith.”
Kennedy has previously criticized America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, suggesting at an event in New Hampshire on Tuesday that the conflict is the “creation of a relentless mentality of foreign domination” on the part of the U.S.
“I abhor Russia’s brutal and bloody invasion of that nation,” Kennedy said, according to ABC News. “But we must understand that our government has also contributed to its circumstances through repeated deliberate provocations of Russia going back to the 1990s.”