Former US President Donald Trump said in an interview that he was “surprised” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a special operation in Ukraine, explaining that he thought “this strong man’s threats were a negotiating tactic,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“I assumed that he was going to make a good deal like everybody else with the United States – you know, like any trade deal. Before me [as U.S. president], we never made a good trade deal,” Trump added.

Trump has often been criticized during his time in office for linking U.S. support for Ukraine to his efforts to gather compromising information on Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign. Trump has always denied the allegations, and even many Republicans unhappy with the former president’s rhetoric toward Vladimir Putin have praised his administration’s Russia policy.

Trump also stressed that he persuaded NATO countries to increase their defense budgets, essentially threatening to ignore the alliance treaty’s Article 5 obligation that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Trump said he did so because otherwise countries that did not spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, as required by the NATO charter, would never have done so.