The first ones were held in the USA debate, which took place on the American channel ABCnews, presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The former president and the current vice-president of the USA discussed a number of domestic political issues, but foreign policy was also discussed, including Ukraine.
The debate, which was supposed to last 90 minutes, dragged on a bit. In particular, because of Trump's long answers. According to CNN's calculations, the former president spoke for a total of 43 minutes, while his opponent spoke for 37,5 minutes.
In general, issues of domestic American politics, such as the economy, problems with migrants, the ban on abortion, the protection of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power, medicine, etc., received much more attention in the debates than foreign policy topics. However, the issue of Russia's war against Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas also found a place.
Russia's war against Ukraine
Although the presidential candidates came to the issue of Russian aggression against Ukraine only after an hour of debate, its discussion was emotional.
Trump repeated his accusations that Russia would not attack Ukraine if he were president, but avoided answering a moderator's question about whether he wanted Kyiv to win this war.
"I want the war to stop. I want to save lives because people are dying by the millions, the numbers are much higher than what you are getting, they are fake numbers.” said the former US president.
Trump also failed to reveal his "peace plan" at the moderator's request, only saying that he would call the leaders of Ukraine and Russia, and after that, according to him, the war would be over.
Commenting on this, Harris accused Trump of flirting with dictators, and also stated that Trump "would have surrendered in 24 hours" and "Putin would be sitting in Kyiv" and looking further to Europe.
"You think you're friends with a dictator, but he'd eat you for lunch." said the vice president.
Kamala Harris said that a few days before the start of the Russian invasion, she met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"I met with Zelensky a few days before Russia invaded Ukraine... I shared with President Zelensky US intelligence data on how he can protect himself," — Harris said during the debate.
She also said that after the meeting she went to the countries of the eastern flank of NATO, to Poland and Romania, where she worked on uniting allies to help Ukraine.
"Thanks to the work that I and others have done, we have united 50 countries to support Ukraine in its righteous defense. And thanks to our support, thanks to air defense, ammunition, artillery, Javelins, Abrams tanks, which we provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country." - she emphasized.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas
Speaking about the conflict that broke out last October between Israel and the Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, Trump used his catchphrase that this war would not have started if he were president of the United States. In addition, he said that Israel should "finish what it started", "get it over with quickly" and that the US should "allow Israel to finish the job".
Harris, for her part, echoed the Joe Biden administration's stance on the US's "ironclad support" and "unwavering commitment" to Israel, and stressed that the country has a right to defend itself, but added that how it does so is important. In this vein, she mentioned the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and the death of civilians from hostilities.
"We know that this war must end. This has to end immediately, and the way it ends is that we need a cease-fire agreement and we need the release of the hostages. Therefore, we will continue to work on it around the clock," — she said, adding that she advocated a two-state solution to the conflict.
Trump and Orban
During the debate, Harris reproached Trump that many world leaders were "laughing at him", and some of the military leaders, she said, called the former president "a disgrace".
In response, Trump recalled how he was praised by the leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, whom current US President Joe Biden called a dictator. The ex-president claimed that Orbán said that Russia and China would fear Trump if he won the election.
"Look, that's what Viktor Orban said. He said that the person most respected and most feared is Donald Trump." he added, also calling Orbán "one of the most respected people."
Migration issue
Speaking about the issue of migrants, Trump criticized the Biden-Harris administration for allegedly allowing tens of millions of migrants to enter the United States during their tenure. He also mentioned a social media hoax about Haitian migrants in the city of Springfield stealing domestic cats and dogs to eat.
In general, on the issue of migrants, Trump operated in fact with fabrications and manipulations, while Harris reminded him of the events in the US Congress, when Democrats and Republicans worked out a compromise law to strengthen control of the US-Mexico border, but its approval was thwarted by a group of "Trumpists".
Due to the issue of migrants and the border, in particular, the consideration in the US Congress and the issue of allocation of funds for the continuation of military aid to Ukraine has been delayed. American lawmakers were at a dead end for half a year until they managed to separate the border issue from the issue of aid to Ukraine and Israel.
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