Out with He’s a “crazy SOB,” a “butcher” and “war criminal” who “cannot remain in power.” In with “I think he wants peace. I think he would tell me if he didn’t. I trust him on this subject.”
Foreign affairs specialists say that when world leaders conduct diplomacy under the glare of the lights − statements, news conferences, impromptu remarks − their true intentions aren’t always clear.
But there’s little question President Donald Trump’s public comments appearing to accommodate Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over a possible Ukraine war peace deal are a major departure from Joe Biden’s confrontational stance against Putin. Trump has flipped the United States’ Putin script.
And it has shocked Ukraine and its European allies.
“At the moment it looks like Russia 1, the United States 0, and if Russia is winning, Ukraine is losing,” said Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, in a phone interview from Munich. Goncharenko is attending a security conference in Munich, where Vice President JD Vance gave a speech that mostly avoided the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instead addressed social issues important to the Trump administration’s political base. After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vance said they had “good conversations” about how to bring the war to a close.
Still, Goncharenko added of Trump’s comments: “This is not the language with which to speak about Putin. It’s hard to understand what Trump really means when he says these things. He needs to understand that Putin hates the U.S.”
Tump-Putin call: ‘lengthy and fruitful’
Putin has seen six U.S. presidents come and five go. There has been on-and-off U.S.-Russia cooperation on trade, nuclear and ballistic missile treaties, fighting terrorism and more for decades. But enmity certainly looked like the consensus − public − wisdom on Russia during the Biden administration.
As Putin, Russian officials and state media routinely mocked Biden, the former president labeled Putin a “pure thug,” a “brutal tyrant” and a “murderous dictator.” He cut off all contact with Russia’s government after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Biden gave Ukraine billions in U.S. military assistance, rallied allies behind Ukraine’s fight and insisted the mission was to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” drawing Moscow’s ire.
