Trump's main rival calls Russia's war against Ukraine a "territorial dispute"

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who may be a real competitor to the current Republican favorite Donald Trump, said that protecting Ukraine from Russian invasion is not a vital US interest.

"While the United States has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing our military's readiness crisis, achieving energy security and independence, and containing the economic, cultural, and military power of the Communist Party of China – becoming increasingly entangled in the territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them," Desantis said.

While Desantis acknowledged that "peace must be the goal," he warned that sending troops or sophisticated weapons such as F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles "risks drawing the United States into the conflict and bringing us closer to a hot phase of war between the world's two largest nuclear powers."

The Foreign Ministry invited DeSantis to visit Ukraine in response to his controversial statement.

On Twitter, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko expressed confidence that Desantis, as a former military man who has been in the war zone, "knows the difference between a 'dispute' and a war."

"We invite him to visit Ukraine to gain a deeper understanding of Russia's full-scale invasion and the threats it poses to U.S. interests," Nikolenko said.

Background. To recap, Trump said he would allow Putin to occupy Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine in exchange for peace.