Donald Trump ‘dragged kicking & screaming into realising he can’t trust Vladimir Putin’ | UK | News
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country on February 24, 2022, sparking an international crisis and threatening to seize Kiev in the early days of the war. Ukraine, with strong support from its European allies and the United States, eventually halted the Kremlin forces’ advance and managed to launch its own counteroffensive; He even captured a small piece of Russia in return.
Since then, however, the war has progressed well, with the front lines ebbing and flowing past the three-year anniversary; both sides suffer economically and suffer brutal losses.
Recent attempts to end the war have regularly gone from promising to failing, often due to the intervention of Donald Trump.
Professor Anthony Glees, a security expert at the University of Buckingham, told the Express that the US President may finally realize that Vladimir Putin is playing a long game on the Western world after the last peace talks planned to be held in Budapest fell apart.
Prof Glees said: “I have no doubt that Trump has been driven to realize that Putin is determined to be given what he can call a victory over Ukraine, that there are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’, that he will not only get the 20 per cent he got four years later, but will come back for more later.”
“But all the same, Putin continues to exert a strange, thought-provoking power over Trump, and I’m not holding my breath. He’s convinced Trump that Ukraine will eventually lose, and Trump doesn’t like losers.”
The Kremlin chief, who had initially planned to capture Kiev within days, had met Trump face-to-face in Alaska this year but was visibly soured on the planned peace talks when it became clear that the American side intended to force a ceasefire on the front lines before further negotiations could take place.
Prof Glees continued: “For almost four years brave Ukrainians have been resisting Putin’s war of aggression designed to steal their country from them. The truth is that Putin cannot take Ukraine by force any time soon, probably never. Even the Russians admit they have thrown almost everything at Ukraine, but despite Iran’s drones and North Korea’s crack troops, the front line has not moved this year. Russia has one million Your soldier lost his north.”
So what can Europe and the world do to increase pressure on Russia to return to the table? Prof Glees believes the answer is simple.
“What European NATO members need to do is tell Trump that they will never surrender to Putin because they cannot afford to surrender and Russia will be the loser,” he says. “This line, backed by new weapons and a determination to expel Russia from NATO skies if it dares to trespass again, may eventually lead Trump to see that he needs Europe as much as Europe needs him, and that he can never trust the crook in the Kremlin.”
