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Crimea was handed over to the Russians in 2014 and will remain with Russia, US President Donald Trump said in an interview with Time magazine published on Friday.
"Crimea will stay with Russia," Trump told the magazine, adding that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "understands that."
"Everybody understands that it's been with them for a long time. It's been with them long before Trump came along," the US president said.
Earlier this week, Trump attacked Zelensky for refusing to recognize Crimea as Russian, claiming that Ukraine should have fought for it in 2014 and blaming Zelensky for prolonging the war.
"Well, Crimea went to the Russians. It was handed to them by Barack Hussein Obama, not by me," Trump said in the Time interview.
"Will they be able to take it back? The Russians have had their submarines there for a long time before any period we're talking about, for many years. People speak mostly Russian in Crimea. That's not a given from Trump.
"Would I have been treated the way I was treated under Obama? No, it wouldn't have happened," Trump told Time, claiming that if he had been president in 2014, Russia would not have taken Crimea.
In 2014, before running for the US presidency, Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin's first invasion of Ukraine as "smart."
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said that Putin "has done a wonderful job of taking the mantle."
"You look at what he's doing. And so smart," Trump told Fox.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented a ceasefire proposal that included recognizing Crimea as Russian territory as a step towards peace, an official familiar with the negotiations told Politico.
The US has not confirmed the specifics of the ceasefire proposal, and Trump this week appeared to deny the push over Crimea.
“No one is asking Zelensky to recognize Crimea as Russian territory,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “But if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it 11 years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a fight?”
Trump's statements were criticized by the Ukrainian Crimean Tatar community, the indigenous inhabitants of Crimea, who in February 2014 clashed with a covert Russian army in Simferopol during large protests, while Ukrainian troops were blocked by the Russian military at their bases in Crimea.
"The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People declares that the only legitimate way to end the Russia-Ukraine war, to establish a guaranteed and just peace in the region, is the de-occupation of Crimea and other occupied territories of Ukraine and the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders," the Mejlis said in a statement on Thursday.
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