Biden, Like Trump, Blames Obama for Losing Crimea to Putin, Book Reveals

In a new book, President Joe Biden said that he holds the Obama administration accountable for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which culminated in Moscow seizing control of the Crimean Peninsula.

According to Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, War, Biden expressed discontent during a private conversation late last year over how his former running mate handled Russian troops invading Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in February 2014. At the time, Biden was serving as vice president under former President Barack Obama.

“They f***** up in 2014,” Woodward quoted Biden saying to a close friend in December 2023, according to the Associated Press, who obtained a copy of Woodward’s book before its publishing date of October 15. “Barack never took [Russian President Vladimir Putin] seriously.”

Biden is also quoted as telling the friend that the White House “never should have let Putin just walk in there” and that Washington “did nothing” when Russia invaded.

Former President Donald Trump has also pointed blame at the Obama administration’s handling of Putin’s invasion, which boiled over into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. During a press briefing in 2018, Trump told reporters that he had “a very good meeting” with Putin earlier in the year, during which the pair “discussed about … the fact that President Obama allowed a very large part of Ukraine to be taken” in 2014.

“That was President Obama’s regime,” Trump added during the briefing.

Newsweek reached out to the White House press office via email on Tuesday night for comment.

After invading Ukraine in 2014, Russia held an election and annexed Crimea, a move that the United States and many Western allies called illegal. In response, Washington and much of Europe placed sanctions on Russia, although unlike in 2022, Western countries did not provide Ukraine with military aid to fight back.

During a 2023 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Obama defended his response to Crimea’s annexation, saying that the circumstances in Ukraine were not the same as they were when Putin invaded in 2022.

“Ukraine of that time was not the Ukraine that we’re talking about today,” the former president said. “There’s a reason there was not an armed invasion of Crimea, because Crimea was full of a lot of Russian speakers, and there was some sympathy to the views that Russia was representing.”

Trump vs. Biden’s Plan for Ukraine

Biden and Trump have repeatedly disagreed over how the U.S. should handle the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. The current White House administration has stood firm in supporting Ukraine through aid packages and defense boosts. Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has also vowed a similar commitment to securing Ukraine’s sovereignty if elected to the Oval Office in November.

Trump, however, has been much more elusive as to how he plans to address the war in Ukraine if he wins a second term in the White House. He, along with some Congressional Republicans, has been critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the consistent flow of aid to Ukraine, including saying during a rally in North Carolina last month, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelensky.”

The Crimean Peninsula has served as a key military hub for Russia since 2022. Ukraine’s defense forces have repeatedly targeted infrastructure on the peninsula in their efforts to defend against Putin’s latest invasion.

Trump’s Relationship to Putin

Trump has been accused of appearing friendly toward the Russian president both in office and on the campaign trail. Woodward writes in his book that Trump and Putin have had as many as seven phone calls since the former president left office. Trump was also accused of sending secret shipments of medical equipment during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, including ventilators.

Trump communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek in an email Tuesday that Woodward’s book belonged in a “bargain bin.”

“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung added.

Trump has vowed to end the war between Russia and Ukraine if elected in November. The former president’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, floated a potential avenue to bring an end to the conflict if Trump wins, during an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast in September. He said a “peaceful settlement” in the war “probably looks like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone.”

Russia occupies large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine. Zelensky has said that the war cannot end until all territory is returned to Kyiv, including Crimea.

After a meeting with Zelensky in New York City last month, Trump told reporters at a briefing that he and the Ukrainian president “have a very good relationship.”

“I also have a very good relationship with President Putin, and, you know, I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump added.

Zelensky responded to Trump’s comment that he hopes “we have more good relations with us.”

“It takes two to tango, and we will,” Trump replied.

Update 10/08/24, 9:05 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and background.