I hope y’all are enjoying Memorial Day. I’ve been taking a bit of a break, as I had to haul my head out of politics for a couple of days. But here’s a new development. See the Associated Press, President Donald Trump says Russian leader Vladimir Putin ‘has gone absolutely CRAZY!’
President Donald Trump made it clear he is losing patience with Vladimir Putin, leveling some of his sharpest criticism at the Russian leader as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Sunday night.
Trump said Putin is “needlessly killing a lot of people,” pointing out that “missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.”
Russia has ben engaged in a military assault of Ukraine, needlessly killing a lot of people, since bleeping February 2022. Trump is just now noticing this?
The U.S. president warned that if Putin wants to conquer all of Ukraine, it will “lead to the downfall of Russia!”
Exclamation points! Trump must be really concerned. I mean, concerned!!
But Trump expressed frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well, saying that he is “doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does.”
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump is still a moron. Some things don’t change. The Kremlin has dismissed Trump’s lèse-majesté as “emotional overload.” Note that his is what abusive men always say about women. She’s just being hysterical.
David Sanger writes in the New York Times,
“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” President Trump told reporters on Sunday afternoon, just before boarding Air Force One for a short trip from his golf club in New Jersey to Washington. Hours later, he posted about the Russian leader, saying, “He has gone absolutely CRAZY.”
Mr. Trump’s rare criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia came after a weekend of the largest bombardment of Ukrainian cities over the past three years, mostly aimed at civilian targets, from residential areas in Kyiv to university dormitories. The Russian attacks also happened only days after Mr. Trump had what he described publicly as an “excellent” two-hour phone call with Mr. Putin that Mr. Trump promised would immediately lead to direct peace negotiations.
Mr. Trump has long said he enjoys a “good relationship” with Mr. Putin, and it was not the first time he expressed shock that the Russian president was unleashing attacks on Ukrainian civilians. A month ago Mr. Trump wrote “Vladimir, STOP” as a barrage of missiles and drones hit Ukraine, including crowded playgrounds. But Mr. Trump has never linked the attacks with his own decision, reaffirmed last week, to refuse to join the Europeans in new financial sanctions on Russia, or to offer new arms and help to the Ukrainians.
The result is a strategic void in which Mr. Trump complains about Russia’s continued killing but so far has been unwilling to make Mr. Putin pay even a modest price.
The pattern is a familiar one, several outside experts and former government officials said. Mr. Trump signals he is pulling back from a conflict he often describes as Europe’s war, then expresses shock that Mr. Putin responds with a familiar list of demands that amount to a Ukrainian surrender, followed by accelerating attacks. Mr. Trump episodically insists he is “absolutely” considering sanctions, including on Sunday.
And his culties think Trump is such a tough guy. What a joke.
Yet each time when he is forced to make a decision about joining Europe in new economic penalties, he has pulled back.
“Russia said no cease-fire and Trump is increasingly washing his hands of it,” Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a geopolitical consulting firm, wrote on Monday. The result is that “support for Ukraine continues to recede in importance for the Americans,” he added. Mr. Bremmer predicted that “what comes next is more fighting — expanded Russian attacks across Ukraine, fewer restraints on Ukraine targeting inside Russia.”
The latest cycle of this odd interaction between the American and Russian leaders happened just last week. Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his desire for a summit meeting soon with Mr. Putin, declared that only he and the Russian leader had the power and influence to end the war. Yet by the time they were done talking in their call last week, Mr. Trump had changed his position, saying it was now up to Ukraine and Russia to end the war in direct negotiations.
Trump may have really thought Putin would back off of Ukraine if he asked nicely. But now he may have accepted that Putin is not going to give him a diplomatic win, so he’s lost interest.
In a subsequent conversation with the leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Finland, along with the European Commission, Mr. Trump had yet another view: Mr. Putin thought he was winning the war and would press his advantage. According to several officials briefed on the conversation, Mr. Trump made it clear he had no intention on putting pressure, much less harsh economic sanctions, on Russia.
“He said, essentially, ‘I’m out,’” said one of the officials, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to describe the conversation.
Maybe with Trump out, other European countries can step in.
Anyone who expects consistency of any sort from Trump hasn't been paying attention. He is easily influenced by whatever random info he sees, though that 'influence' only lasts until he gets distracted by some other shiny bauble.
I do hope that Democrats recognize (and perhaps even admit?) that this 'news' undermines the idea that Putin 'owns' Trump (via blackmail).
Getting even more controversial, I consider Sanger's description of Russia's most recent drone/missile strikes on Ukraine as propaganda. A quick Goog search indicates that Ukrainian sources say that 12 people were killed, after overnight attacks by 300+ drones (plus cruise and even ballistic missiles). If Russia was *intentionally* targeting "…civilian targets, from residential areas in Kyiv to university dormitories" and "crowded playgrounds", the dead would have numbered in the *thousands*.
I am NOT defending the attacks; I hate war precisely because it kills people and other living things. I AM saying that Sanger – and by extension, the NYT – is knowingly misleading readers about the targeting of those drone and missile strikes. If Russia's strikes on Ukraine were targeting civilians, the casualties there would be more like what has happened in Gaza. Across 3 years of war in Ukraine, total civilian casualties are about 13-14,000; the body count in Gaza from Israeli attacks is at least 4x that (and that's not counting deaths from disease and starvation).
My point is not to support Russia's war on Ukraine; it is that we have allowed ourselves to accept BS from the NYT because it fits our preconceptions.
"In war, truth is the first casualty"
I'm not a military expert, but it doesn't seem to me to be impossible that the Ukrainians are better able to shelter from drone attacks than the Gazans. Conditions in the two places may be very different. Don't get too carried away with assumptions about the reporting. Some skepticism is usually good, but assuming the New York Times is part of some global misinformation conspiracy is not.
To add to your point, Maha, Ukraine also has air defenses, and have demonstrated an ability to shoot down some incoming Russian aircraft and missiles, something the Palestinians do not have. They're essentially sitting ducks, the Ukrainians are not.
The pot has called the kettle black. Then the kettle countered by dissing the pot's stability. Coming soon, my drone is bigger and badder than your drone. High level diplomacy for sure. Just feeling each other out and looking for weaknesses. At their age that's about everything on any given day. Aim low cause it's all sagging fast. That is the coaching advice they both need. Still if they get down too far, getting back up could be an unanticipated problem. This is all tricky stuff for those ageing in dog years. Act their age? Not a chance.
Talk is cheap, Putin knows that. And as long as all Trump's doing is talking, and not leveling sanctions, something that democrats and even some republicans would do in this situation, he'll easily dismiss it, this time as "emotional" rantings.
I don't know if Putin has something on Trump or not. It wouldn't surprise me if he did, as "kompromat" is the Russian intel stock in trade. I believe the more important consideration is Trump has demonstrated over the years that MAGA has an affinity for Russia, and it thus has nothing to fear from the US when he's running the country.
Before the last Russian drone and missile attacks Ukraine had carried out two nights of heavy drone attacks on Russia plus, during a visit to the Kursk Oblast, Putin's helicopter ended up in a cloud of Ukrainian drones. The Russian Air Force claims to have shot down 46.
So far, we don't have enough information to judge if it was an assassination attempt or just bad luck.
In any case the Russians may be a bit annoyed.