President Donald Trump gave Vladimir Putin a firm deadline of declaring a ceasefire with Ukraine by Friday or else.
Trump, who had promised last year he could end the war in 24 hours, said on July 14 that Putin had to act by September 2 or else.
On July 28 he shortened the deadline to 10 or 12 days or else.
On July 29 he said it was August 8 or else.
Or else what?
To no one’s surprise, August 8 passed with no sanctions and no penalties, just a diplomatic victory for the former KGB agent in Moscow.
Putin played Trump for a patsy once more.
Instead of crippling penalties, Trump announced a summit with Putin next Friday to decide the future of Ukraine, a meeting that excludes Ukrainian President Zelensky.
“Mr Putin seems to have achieved this diplomatic triumph simply by skilfully playing his recent negotiations with American envoys. It was a familiar pattern for Mr Trump—hard rhetoric, then soft climbdown and more breathing space for the Kremlin,” The Economist reported.
Sen. Dan Sullivan predicted the Putin-Trump meeting would either take place on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson or Eielson Air Force Base for security reasons.
It is a sign of Trump’s iron grip on Sullivan and Alaska’s other leading Republicans that they did not protest the exclusion of Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the proceedings.
Or the obvious conclusion that this is a great victory for Putin.
Zelensky’s absence makes a mockery of Trump’s claim to be a peacemaker. Alaska’s leading Republicans are blind to the scale of this injustice and Trump’s capitulation.
“Of course, we will not give Russia any awards for what it has done,” Zelensky said in a video message posted to Telegram. “The Ukrainian people deserve peace.”
“Any decisions made against us, any decisions made without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace,” he said Saturday. “They will bring nothing. These are dead decisions; they will never work.”
In an interview with Alaska’s News Source, Sullivan portrayed Trump as the great peacemaker for welcoming Putin to Alaska.
“Well first, I think it’s great that we’re hosting. It makes sense. We’re the most strategic place in the world. We obviously do have shared American Russian history in Alaska. And we are a place that when you look at our own history we’ve had world leaders come here before at big moments in history.”
“So I think it makes enormous sense that it’s here. I think we should be honored that it’s here. And you know the administration’s been putting a lot of effort not just into this, but in peace in so many other areas of the world, a lot of diplomacy,” Sullivan said.
In Sullivan’s distorted version of reality, Putin, the former KGB agent, is afraid of Trump.
The threat of the sanctions that were never implemented forced Putin’s hand, according to Sullivan.
“It’s not words that matter to Putin, it’s strength and power,” said Sullivan, who has long labored under the notion that Trump is tough on Putin.
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that Putin has now decided to come to the table with those sanction threats,” Sullivan told the TV interviewer.
A better explanation is that it is no coincidence that Trump has rewarded Putin with a summit on U.S. soil without getting anything in return to help Ukraine.
Sullivan, you may remember, spent the entire Biden administration complaining that Biden was not doing enough to help Zelensky and Ukraine.
“No matter the soaring rhetoric from President Biden, his administration is not in it to win it in Ukraine,” Sullivan said last July.
Sullivan’s position on Ukraine evaporated when Trump returned to power.
The junior senator is right in one sense: Trump’s words don’t matter to Putin.
The dictator recognizes that it will be TACO time in Alaska.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
