Former Tory minister Grant Shapps has compared Donald Trump to the IRA over his response to the Ukraine war.
The US president has regularly appeared to side with the aggressor Vladimir Putin rather than Ukraine over the conflict as he tries to push for a quick peace deal to end the war.
Trump also called Russia’s deadliest strikes against Ukraine of 2025, which killed at least 31 people, a “mistake”.
Speaking to One Decision Podcast hosts, Kate McCann and ex MI6 chief Richard Dearlove, Shapps – a former defence secretary who lost his seat at the last election – said this was “weasel language”.
“We used to hear it from the IRA,” he said. “It’s just appalling to hear this sort of thing.
“It’s appalling not to be able to condemn it properly.”
When the Irish Republican Army (IRA) killed 11 civilians and a police officer in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday in 1987, they called it a mistake, and said they were targeting British soldiers.
Russia invaded in 2022 and continues to hold a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, but Trump has falsely accused president Volodymyr Zelenskyy of starting the war on multiple occasions.
The president’s top team has also suggested Ukraine may have to cede occupied land to Russia and repeated Kremlin lies about Zelenskyy’s legitimacy as president.
Trump did manage to secure to a secure a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea and on energy infrastructure, but both sides soon claimed their opponent breached the terms within hours of agreeing to it.
The US president has blamed the war on Zelenskyy and his predecessor Joe Biden, too.
Shapps slammed Trump’s “demoralising” lack of “clarity” over the war.
“I feel disgusted,” the former cabinet minister noted. “The idea that the leader of the free world cannot tell the difference between the dictator who locks up and murders his opponents, and invades innocent democratic countries, and the country itself that has been invaded.
“This lack of moral clarity is completely demoralising for the rest of the democratic world.”
Shapps also warned Trump that if you “let one dictator get away with it, others may follow”.
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