Donald Trump, the former US president, has explained how he would make a fortune for the country, from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, by taking advantage of oil sanctions on the former.

He was speaking to Fox Business, when he pointed out that countries were avoiding buying oil from Russia after President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, claiming he wanted to “denazify” and “demilitarize” the sovereign country. He noted that if he were the President of the United States, he’d have exported oil to everybody. 

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Trump also shared his opinion on whether the current president, Joe Biden, should impose sanctions on Russia’s oil sector. He said “You should open it up in the United States and you should buy no oil whatsoever from Russia. He should open it up—it’ll take a while, that’s the problem, we had it there already—our country would have made an absolute fortune, more money that has ever made, on this situation”. 

Once again, he took the opportunity to highlight how this situation would have never happened if he’d been in charge. Trump said, “Now, the situation itself would have never happened so we wouldn’t have had that problem. But we had low energy costs that were it was very abundant. And now they’ve closed all the leases, they’ve ended exploration”. 

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Earlier too, Trump had stated that Putin would have never attacked if he were in the Oval Office, a sentiment echoed by some Americans, as per a study. He’d also taken the opportunity to call Putin a “genius” and “savvy”, something which he recently echoed at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as well. Trump said, “The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he’s smart. But the real problem is that our leaders are so dumb”, AFP reported. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had taken a swipe at Trump for his comments, saying, “Well, as a matter of policy, we try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy”.