Candace Owens Blames America For Russian Invasion of Ukraine: ‘WE Are at Fault’

Conservative commentator Candace Owens has made herself part of the Ukraine news for a second time in less than a week with her contention on Tuesday that the United States is to blame for Russia’s invasion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a long speech on Monday to announce that Russia is recognizing both Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as independent and sovereign states. A large portion of those remarks were dedicated to Putin’s ahistorical accounting of grievances over the formation of Ukraine itself, questioning the nation’s right to even exist.

Putin blamed America for most of those complaints and described Ukraine variously as a puppet of the United States or a victim of U.S.-led NATO policy, and much more. It echoed his earlier in the day commentary and that of his security council, in a highly choreographed and televised meeting to discuss whether or not to recognize the separatists as sovereign. That meeting featured dozens of sharp condemnations of the United States, up to and including the commander of the Russian National Guard Viktor Zolotov claiming “we have no borders with Ukraine, because we have borders with the Americans, because they are the masters and the rest are just puppets.”

Zolotov (not to mention Putin and other members of the Russian leadership both yesterday and in recent weeks) claimed the U.S. has been helping Ukraine “prepare a nuclear arsenal.”

All that revisionist history and anti-American sentiment found a fan in the Daily Wire’s Owens.

“I suggest every American who wants to know what’s *actually* going on in Russia and Ukraine, read this transcript of Putin’s address,” said Owens in a quote retweet. “As I’ve said for month— NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward.”

“WE are at fault.”

The tweet that Owens was sharing contained a link, which the Twitter user described as “The official transcript of Putin’s speech in the UN Security Council.” That link, however, was to the meeting on Monday that Putin held with the Russian Federation Security Council we mentioned above. It was the official transcript from the official website for the President of Russia, which will have portions missing. By way of comparison, the official transcript of Putin’s televised address from last night did not include his comments about former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

In any case, despite the fact that the transcript was misidentified and may be incomplete, the essential outline of Putin’s complaints about the United States remain and it was those that Owens highlighted for agreement, adding the emphatic summary “we are at fault.”

After some backlash on Twitter, Owens doubled down in a few subsequent tweets, one of which saw her bashing past U.S. conflicts as the result of American aggression and imploring readers to “read transcripts from ALL world leaders.”

Needless to say, that backlash was at times harsh, and was by no means limited to the opposite side of the aisle. Here are just three examples.

Owens also slid into the Ukraine news on Friday, when she tweeted that Americans should forget about Russia and worry about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instead. “STOP talking about Russia,” she wrote. “Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro.”

Apparently, that would not be acting as an “aggressor” in the great historic scale of invasions and conflict.