The Pendulum for US President Donald Trump’s Stance on the war in Ukraine has swung firmly back to Russian President Vladimir Putin on matters.
Trump had it last month caused some speculation that he is ready to take a hard line against the Kremlin’s war, and if not to accept the status of the European Union, at least cool on its side.
But the words that first started such considerations – on the sidelines of the UN general assembly – proved to be less of a policy change and more of a Blip.
After dashing hopes of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Trump had a two-hour phone call Thursday with Putin asking the Russian leader.
The next day, during his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House, Trump turned his back on more agreement and repeatedly said he believed Putin wanted peace.
Trump’s position should not surprise anyone given that he and his administration have stopped financial aid to Ukraine, refusing to make any new contributions to Ukraine, said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
US President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House for high-level talks, but questions remain as to when the US will supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.
“Trump has been fooling people with his willingness to help Ukraine and Hammer Russia,” O’Brien wrote in his Subrack Newsletter over the weekend.
Zelenskyy “was early fooled into thinking he could get the Tomahawks [only] Meeting with Trump was set to embarrass them all again,” O’Bien added.
Putin’s ‘whisper’ in Trump’s ear
While Trump didn’t publicly embarrass Zelenskyy at the White House press conference on Friday, that didn’t stop him from taunting his Ukrainian counterpart in private, according to published reports.
Trump insisted – while shouting and cursing – that Zelenskyy must agree to carry out Putin’s terms to end the war, including a clean-up facility, or face destruction by Russia, the financial paper said.
Trump pushed Zelenskyy to give up swaths of territory in Russia and resorted to profanity during the meeting, Reuters News Agency reported.
Trump appears to have been hit by Putin, said Michael Bociurkiw, a global affairs analyst and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a non-profit think tank.
“Mr. Putin was able to whisper in Mr.
“He has a very difficult spell to describe Trump,” Bociurkiw said.
In the days since then, if there were any shreds of hope lingering in Trump Leating Pro-Ukraine, he crushed them.
Trump told reporters on the air once Sunday that both sides should leave the frontline in Ukraine’s Donbas region “in a way that effectively prepares Russia for its 2022 attack.”
Then on Monday at the White House, Trump responded by responding to a reporter’s question about his comments in September that Ukraine could win the war.
“I don’t think they’re going to win it, but they can win it. I never said they were going to win it,” Trump said in the White House. “Anything can happen. You know, war is a very strange thing. A lot of bad things happen, a lot of good things happen.“
US President Donald Trump, who appeared alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday, said it is not an easy situation ‘between Ukrainian President Vladimir Putin.
Instead of pushing for peace in Ukraine, a country that was attacked by a bigger and more powerful neighbor, Trump is framing his intervention as a way to prevent deaths on the battlefield.
“It’s a bloodbath, the worst since the second world war,” Msombuluko said. “If we don’t make a deal, a lot of people will be paying a lot of money.”
This is the situation in which the Trump-Putin Summit may take place in Hungary in the coming weeks, almost two months after the Alaska summit failed to move the needle in the direction of peace.
Zelenskyy said he will go to Budapest if invited but he is not happy with the place or the host, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, in opposition to the country’s leader in the EU.
“I don’t believe that the Prime Minister who blocks Ukraine everywhere can do anything good for Ukrainea or give a balanced contribution,” Zelenskyy told Bloomberg News on Sunday.
