Putin would 'eat you for lunch,' harris tells trump in bitter clash over russia and ukraine

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are shown on screen during a debate watch party at the Cameo Art House Theatre in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Sept. 10,

2024. Allison Joyce | Bloomberg | Getty Images Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, clashed repeatedly over Russia, Kremlin

leader Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine in Tuesday night's closely watched presidential debate. Harris told Trump, who previously served as U.S. president, that Putin "would

eat you for lunch" and said that, if the Republican were to become president, "Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now." She also accused Trump of being ready to abandon

Ukraine after 2½ years of war and an immense military funding effort by the U.S. "Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president

and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO," Harris said during the ABC News presidential debate, according to a

transcript of the debate. "What we have done to preserve the ability of Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to fight for their independence. Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his

eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland," she said, before describing Putin as "a dictator who would eat you for lunch." Republican presidential nominee, former U.S.

President Donald Trump, debates Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, for the first time during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution

Center on September 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Win Mcnamee | Getty Images News | Getty Images Trump rejected Harris' comments, claiming that the war would not have started

if he had been in power in 2022 and telling the audience that Putin "would be sitting in Moscow, and he wouldn't have lost 300,000 men and women" in the war. Exact war

casualty figures are unknown. Neither Russia nor Ukraine release such sensitive information, but U.S. intelligence estimated last year that around 315,000 Russian soldiers — the vast

majority of whom are men — had been killed or wounded in the war up to that time. Trump has repeatedly insinuated that he could cut military funding for Ukraine and would seek an immediate

end to the conflict, with officials in Kyiv concerned that the policy would mean it has to cede occupied territory to Russia as part of a deal. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian

President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland. Chris McGrath | Getty Images News | Getty Images Trump was asked several times

Tuesday night if he wanted Ukraine to win the war, or whether it was in the U.S.' best interests for Kyiv to achieve victory. He responded by insisting that he wants the war to stop in

order to save lives, and that he would look to negotiate a deal with Russia. He has previously said he would end the war within 24 hours if he was president, without stating how he would do

so. On Tuesday, he again did not state how a deal would be reached, or whether it would involve Ukraine ceding occupied territory to Russia — a concession that Kyiv has previously refused

to make. "I think it's in the U.S.' best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. All right. Negotiate a deal. Because we have to stop all of these human lives

from being destroyed," he said during the ABC News presidential debate, according to a transcript. "I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly ... people

being killed by the millions. It's the millions. It's so much worse than the numbers that you're getting, which are fake numbers," Trump said, without providing evidence

or further detail. Harris said she believed "the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that's not who

we are as Americans." The presidential nominees clashed over military funding for Ukraine, a high-profile issue between Democrats and Republicans that resulted in months of gridlock

over a $60 billion aid package for Ukraine that was finally agreed in the spring. To date, the U.S. has provided more than $55.7 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, the U.S. State

Department said in a statement last week, since Russia launched what Washington described as a "premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine" on February

2022. Harris said Tuesday that military funding from the U.S. and Ukraine's international allies had enabled it to resist Russia's invasion, stating that "because of our

support, because of the air defense, the ammunition, the artillery, the javelins, the Abrams tanks that we have provided, Ukraine stands as an independent and free country." People look

at U.S. M12A1 Abrams tank captured by Russian forces in Ukraine, displayed at the WWII memorial complex at Poklonnaya Hill western in Moscow, on May 1, 2024.  Alexander Nemenov | Afp |

Getty Images Trump on Tuesday again repeated his much-stated position that the U.S. should not be paying more than its European partners to support Ukraine, nor paying more into the NATO

alliance, as Europe was "a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are." "They [Europe] should be forced to equalize. With that being said, I want to get

the war settled. I know [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy very well, and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship [with them]," Trump said. Early Wednesday, Russian

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Trump and Harris' debate as a spectacle. "To be honest, I don't know why you think that's big news," the

official told Sputnik Radio when asked to comment on the debate, according to Russian state news agency Tass. "Is that big news that we could see yet another show performed by people

who clearly take no responsibility whatsoever for their words?" she asked rhetorically. Ukraine has not publicly commented on the Harris-Trump debate and has been careful to avoid

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'good reports' from London * Speaker Johnson hopes Musk and Trump can 'reconcile' after public fallout The Kremlin said Wednesday that it didn't like the way

Putin's name featured in the debate and said, "the U.S. as a whole, whichever party the candidates may be from, preserves its negative, unfriendly attitude to our country."

"Putin's name is used as, so to say, one of the tools for the internal political struggle in the U.S. We really, really do not like that. We still hope they will leave our

president's name alone," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, in comments translated by NBC News. "The rest, I think, is a matter of concern for the U.S. voters. It

is up to them to assess the actions of their candidates – not up to us, we have our own matters of concern, our own achievements and our own problems," he added.