Russia’s president has said that Trump was right when he claimed that the Ukraine war would never have happened if Trump had been in office. He also supported the idea that the 2020 elections was stolen.
In an interview with Russian state television, Putin praised Trump as a “clever and pragmatic man” who is focused on U.S. interests.
“We always had a business-like, pragmatic but also trusting relationship with the current U.S. president,” Putin said. “I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided.”
This follows an earlier statement by Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov praising Trump’s views on the Ukraine conflict.
Russia’s top diplomat said Tuesday that Moscow is open for talks with President-elect Donald Trump and praised him for pointing to NATO’s plan to embrace Ukraine as a root cause of the nearly 3-year-old conflict.
Any prospective peace talks should involve broader arrangements for security in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at his annual news conference, while adding that Moscow is open to discussing security guarantees for Kyiv.
Lavrov specifically praised Trump’s comments earlier this month in which he said that NATO’s plans to open its doors to Ukraine had led to the hostilities.
Trump said Russia had it “written in stone” that Ukraine’s membership in NATO should never be allowed, but the Biden administration had sought to expand the military alliance to Russia’s doorstep. Trump added that, “I could understand their feelings about that.”
Putin is not stupid and cannot possibly believe that Trump won in 2020. So what is going on here? It seems to me that he is well aware that Trump admires dictatorial leaders and is highly susceptible to flattery. Perhaps, given Trump’s antipathy to NATO, Putin hopes that Trump will withdraw US support for Ukraine’s admission to that body in exchange for some kind of peace deal. But it seems unlikely that Russia will withdraw from all the regions of Ukraine that it has occupied at such a cost. So perhaps the deal will involve an acceptance of the status quo and no NATO admission for Ukraine in return for a cessation of hostilities.
This will make Ukraine livid of course but Trump will not care because he can then boast that he ended the war as promised.
by the phrasing above, “crisis in ukraine could have been avoided,” all i imagine he means is that ukraine would have had less global support and just let themselves be annexed. i don’t think that’s true for a second. russia might be closer to “victory” now, at best, but they’d still be in a horrific bloody quagmire with no true end in sight.
Putin is a veteran of the
Ministry of TruthKGB. What he actually believes to be true is irrelevant. Everything he says is manipulation and disinformation. And right now he’s buttering Trump up and rewarding him with praise for saying what Putin wants him to say. That, in short, is his game.He’s flattering Trump because he knows Trump is inclined to pressure Ukraine into accepting a peace deal that solidifies the maximum amount of Russian gains. Trump doesn’t care about how much Ukraine loses, and is profoundly susceptible to flattery, so it seems like a pretty straightforward strategy.
Mano:
The USA and Europe are becoming more nationalistic. So a NATO membership for the Ukraine is unlikely.
Russian troops are on the advance in Ukraine, and Western support for Ukraine is crumbling. Putin’s aim is a Russian empire, not peace.
Flattering Trump so that he sides even more with Russia and not Ukraine, because everyone can see Trump is a man-child who responds well to such. Simple.
It’s not just flattery which motivates Trump — I think that being a defeater (or a winner) is the bigger motivator for him. This is where Putin has an advantage over the scheming sycophants who surround Trump, each one in the hope that they will out-manipulate Trump to gain advantage over the others.
It seems to me Putin understands being a defeater… and he’s proved better at it and has several orders of magnitude more patience.
Like DT, Putin only cares about Putin. Anything that strengthens the Soviet Union (sorry, Russia) and weakens the US is what he’s going to do. Putin may be blinded by his ambitions and make mistakes, but he isn’t stupid.
Orange Crook will claim that he ended the war.
Vladolf Putler will deny that there was ever a war until “Ukraine attacked Russia”, but if Ukraine’s chance of entering NATO is quashed, will claim that the “special military operation to denazify Ukraine” was a resounding success.
Orange Crook’s followers will piss themselves laughing as he castigates any journalists that try to pin him down over his barefaced lies.
There will be no laughing in Russia.