AP FACT CHECK: Trump gets much wrong on Ukraine
On the weekend, Trump asserted in an ABC interview that Russia would not enter Ukraine, not seeming to know Russian troops were already there.
Prodded by his interviewer, the Republican presidential candidate modified his statement afterward.
After Ukrainian protesters chased Viktor Yanukovych, their Russian-backed leader, from power in February 2014, Russian troops stationed at a base in Crimea seized strategic locations on the peninsula and replaced the local government with pro-Kremlin politicians.
Moscow didn't stop there, according to the central government in Kiev and its Western backers, sending troops and military equipment to help separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
No respected international election monitors supervised the balloting.
Ukraine is not a NATO country and is not covered under the alliance's basic premise that "an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies," so Trump's implication that NATO somehow failed Ukraine is incorrect.
[...] although NATO has mobilized for campaigns in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya, the self-described defensive alliance has never engaged in military action against Russia.
Former President George W. Bush worked with Putin to fight al-Qaida and other extremist groups after 9/11.
Trump also has been accused of having a hand in the Republican Party platform's omission of pushing for lethal aid to Ukraine, a long held GOP position.