Putin doesn't respect US leadership, says Trump

The former president said that the US was respected like never before under his own leadership.

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not respect American leadership anymore and shows this lack of respect by talking about nuclear weapons all the time, former US President Donald Trump has complained.

Trump spoke at a rally in Nebraska on Sunday and said that America was strong, America was respected, like maybe never before, unlike Joe Biden's administration. He said that leaders of other countries don't return the phone calls of the President of the United States, as he said, referring to March reports that the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates refused to arrange calls with Biden to discuss surging oil prices.

Trump said that Biden has no idea what is going on, referring to a recent incident in which Biden appeared to offer a handshake with no one there to receive it. Trump said that Putin, on the other hand, talks about nuclear weapons all the time.

Trump has claimed that nobody talked about nuclear weapons before. Trump pointed out that his administration totally rebuilt its nuclear arsenal because others were doing the same, because they don't talk about nuclear weapons, you just don't talk about it.

Trump said that Putin talks about it only now because he doesn't respect the US leadership.

Russia sacked Ukraine due to US weakness and incompetence under Biden, as shown by a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, he said.

Putin warned outside forces against interfering in the Ukrainian conflict last week, promising a lightning-speed response to any such action with the use of Moscow's most advanced weaponry. He said that the Russian authorities had already made all the necessary decisions to prepare for such a response.

In a recent interview, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that when Trump was still President, Moscow tried to persuade him to commit to the 1987 statement by US and Soviet leaders that there can be no winners in a war, and that such a war should never be fought. Joe Biden agreed with Moscow, even though the Trump administration wouldn't do so, Lavrov said.

In recent months he added that the situation has deteriorated to the point where there is a real threat of nuclear war.

In late February, a few days after launching a military attack against Ukraine, the Russian president ordered the country s nuclear forces to be put on high combat alert, citing illegitimate sanctions against Russia and aggressive statements by Western officials.

Russia sent troops to Ukraine in late February, after Kiev failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow's eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.