WASHINGTON Three years after trying to extort Ukraine using $391 million in military aid as leverage and two years after being impeached for it, former President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Russian aggression against the country would never have happened on his watch.

Whats happening with Russia and Ukraine would never have happened under the Trump Administration. Not even a possibility! he said in a statement released by his political committee.

The statement made no reference to the scandal that led to Trumps first of two impeachments, in which he held up delivery of U.S. military aid while demanding that Ukraines new president announce an investigation into Joe Biden , then the Democratic primary candidate Trump feared most as a 2020 challenger. The military hardware was released when the scheme became public.

In addition to using U.S. aid intended to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine for his own benefit, Trump made a practice during his presidency of taking Russias side in the dispute between the two nations. For several years, he lobbied fellow leaders of the G-7 group of major economic powers to readmit Russia, even though it had been thrown out because of the invasion and annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

At the G-7 summit in 2018, Trump told his counterparts that Crimea should belong to Russia because the people there spoke Russian repeating comments hed made as a presidential candidate. But you know, the people of Crimea, from what Ive heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were, he told ABC News in 2016.

In 2019, during a news conference following the G-7 meeting in Biarritz, France, Trump rationalized Russias insistence on retaining Crimea by saying it had built a military base there.

That is where they do their submarine work and that is where they dock large and powerful submarines, but not as powerful as ours and not as large as ours, but they have their submarines, he said, while also blaming his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama , for having been outsmarted by Putins decision to invade Ukraine and take the region by force.