WASHINGTON, DC: US President Donald Trump has repeated his claims of brokering peace between India and Pakistan earlier this year through trade, stating that he should be honoured with the Nobel Prize for “ending seven wars.”
Speaking at the American Cornerstone Institute Founder’s Dinner on Saturday, Trump said, “We are forging peace agreements, and we are stopping wars. So we stopped wars between India and Pakistan, Thailand and Cambodia.”
“Think of India and Pakistan. Think of that. And you know how I stopped that —with trade. They want to trade. And I have great respect for both leaders. But when you take a look at all of these wars that we’ve stopped,” he added.
The US president also listed other conflicts he claimed to have influenced, including those in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo.
“Just look at that. India, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Serbia, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo. We stopped all of them. And 60 per cent of them were stopped because of trade,” he said.
He further claimed that, “like with India, I said, ‘look, we’re not going to do any trade if you’re going to fight and they have nuclear weapons. They stopped.”
On the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump claimed it could earn him a Nobel Prize. “I said, ‘Well, what about the seven others? I should get a Nobel Prize for each one’. So they said, ‘but if you stop Russia and Ukraine, sir, you should be able to get the Nobel’. I said I stopped seven wars. That’s one war, and that’s a big one,” he said.
Trump said he initially thought the Russia-Ukraine conflict would be easier to resolve due to his personal rapport with President Vladimir Putin. “Because I have a good relationship with President Putin, disappointed in him, but I do. I thought that would be the easiest one, but we’ll get it done one way or the other,” he said.
Linking energy policy to the war, Trump said, “… That (oil drilling) will automatically stop the war with Russia and Ukraine; you get the prices down a little bit more, that’s got to stop it. I am very disappointed in President Putin. Anywhere between 5000-7000 people are dying every week…”
Reiterating his criticism of Moscow, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “let me down” for not stopping the war with Ukraine during his state visit to Britain.
“He has let me down. I mean, he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s, you know, than he’s killing. I mean, frankly, Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers,” Trump said at a press conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump confessed that even though he thought that the Russia-Ukraine war would be the “easiest” one to solve, it was not the case.
Further, he insisted that the war in Ukraine would not have begun if he had remained in the White House. “This was a thing that would have never happened had I been president. If I were president, it would have never happened. And it didn’t happen for four years,” Trump asserted. “Most people agree it didn’t happen, nor was it close to happening.”
Trump also referred to his past diplomatic outreach, noting that despite a summit between him and Putin at Alaska, during which he urged the Russian president to hold talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, a peace deal did not materialise.
The conflict has continued since then. In February 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, aiming to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, according to President Vladimir Putin.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict that started in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale war in February 2022 has continued with Ukrainian counteroffensives and Russian gains in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In August 2024, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, capturing territory and prisoners. The conflict began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by support for separatist movements in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. (ANI)
