WATCH: Trump attacks Biden over wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan

Thursday’s CNN presidential debate focused on foreign policy, starting with Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third year.

Former President Donald Trump said Russia would never have attacked Ukraine if he had been in office.

“If we had a real president, a president who knew that Putin respected him, he would never have attacked Ukraine,” he said. Trump also attacked Biden over the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and his stance toward Iran.

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Trump has made positive comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s toughness in the past, for example calling Putin’s tactics in invading Ukraine in 2022 “brilliant” and “very clever.”

Trump expresses no such sympathy toward Ukraine or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who recently described him as a “salesman” for the Ukrainian president’s requests for military aid to the United States.

Joe Biden contradicted Donald Trump’s boast that he wanted to push European allies to put more money into defense. “This is a guy who wants to get out of NATO,” Biden said, adding that he had “persuaded 50 other nations” to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

Biden responded forcefully to Trump’s NATO comments, saying, “He has no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”

According to a February AP-NORC poll, about six in 10 Americans view NATO membership as a very or somewhat good thing for the United States, while about a quarter say it is neither good nor bad and only about one in 10 say it is very or somewhat bad.

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