““He has to make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” Trump said after arriving at the White House after his inauguration”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“He has to make a deal. I think he’s destroying Russia by not making a deal,” Trump told reporters Jan. 20 after arriving at the White House after his inauguration.
“I think Russia is going to be in big trouble…Most people thought the war would be over in a week…I think he would be very good at ending this war,” Trump said in what appeared to be his most critical public statements about Putin’s war.
The US president said he would speak with Putin, whom he has often admired, at some point, without specifying a time. Western leaders, with the exception of right-wing figures such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump ally, have avoided meetings and – in most cases – calls with Putin in an effort to isolate him politically.
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“I get along great with [Путіним]. I hope he wants to make a deal,” Trump said of a possible meeting.
During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. In recent weeks, he backtracked on those words, but still promised to end the war quickly.
Many analysts say it will be difficult to end the war in the near term because Putin believes he is winning and has no incentive to stop fighting, even if Russia suffers devastating losses in men and equipment.
Russia has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the war, suffered an estimated 700,000 military casualties, terrorized its neighbors and lost the lucrative European gas market and access to Western financial markets as the ruble plummeted in value.
The Kremlin spends about 40 percent of its budget on military needs and tries to control inflation. Instead, it seized some territory of Ukraine, and insists on the recognition of these “territorial realities”.
Supporters of Ukraine fear that Trump, who has criticized the amount of aid provided by the Biden administration, could put pressure on Kyiv to make concessions it has so far rejected, such as handing over territories currently occupied by Russian forces.
However, some experts doubt that Trump will abandon Ukraine, saying a Russian victory could damage his image in the same way that the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021 damaged the Biden administration’s reputation.
Trump’s latest comments came hours after French President Emmanuel Macron warned that the war would not end “tomorrow or the day after” and that it was vital to leave Kyiv in a strong position ahead of any potential peace talks.
Before a full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia first invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and then began supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine, seizing and eventually claiming much of eastern Ukraine.