From the HuffPost / Yahoo!News:
"Trump Appears Set To Reward Russia For Its Brutal Invasion Of Ukraine
After three years of trying to invade and conquer Ukraine, and three years of failing, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may soon see his fortunes change, thanks to Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Comments by Trump and his defense secretary, former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, have roiled the Munich Security Conference, where European allies who were rallied to Ukraine’s cause by former President Joe Biden in 2022 are expressing betrayal.
“It’s appeasement. It has never worked,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told reporters Thursday. “If there is an agreement made behind our backs, it simply will not work.”
Trump in a social media post Wednesday explained in detail his long conversation with Putin about Ukraine ― without first having spoken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy or American’s European allies who, contrary to Trump’s lies, have been bearing most of the financial burden of helping Ukraine. Trump also described the invasion as a war that “happened” rather than naming Russia as the aggressor.
Later, in comments in the Oval Office, he suggested that Russia deserved to keep parts of Ukraine: “They fought for that land, and they lost a lot of soldiers.” And that Ukraine, somehow, had brought Russia’s invasion and near daily attacks against civilians on itself.
“I think they have to make peace,” he said. “That was not a good war to go into.”
Within days of Russia’s invasion in 2022, Trump described it as “genius” and “savvy” on Putin’s part. The dictator has since then regularly hit residential areas with missiles while his troops have murdered and raped noncombatants in what experts describe as war crimes.
Hegseth, meanwhile, found himself Trump’s highly unpopular mouthpiece in Europe, surrounded by military and elected leaders of countries where Putin is seen far more negatively than he is by Hegseth’s boss.
Hegseth, who had no experience managing a large enterprise prior to his nomination by Trump because of his television show, on Wednesday delivered Trump’s position on Ukraine during a visit to Brussels, the headquarters of NATO: “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” he said.
The remark drew criticism not just from allies in Europe, but also from establishment, anti-Russia Republicans in Washington. “I’d prefer we don’t give away negotiating positions before we actually get started,” said Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hegseth appeared to try to walk the Russia-friendly comments back Thursday.
“Everything is on the table. In his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, what he decides to allow or not allow, is at the purview of the leader of the free world ― President Trump,” he told reporters. “So I’m not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do, what will be in or what will be out, what concessions will be made or what concessions are not made.”
Whether that can have any effect, given Trump’s continued deference to Putin, is unclear, said John Bolton, one of Trump’s first-term national security advisers who has since become a harsh critic.
“It’s pretty well fixed. It’s hard to walk it back when it’s that public, and I’m really more afraid now it’s going to get worse,” Bolton told HuffPost Thursday. “I mean, when you start from that as the going-in position, you know, who knows what comes next?”
He added the policy shift will also hurt Americans, not just Ukrainians fighting for their freedom.
“It was a bad day yesterday for Ukraine, but a bad day yesterday for the United States,” he said. “We’ve got a serious national security interest in peace and stability in Europe, and not having borders changed by unprovoked aggression, and a whole host of other things that I just don’t think Trump understands.”
In any case, Trump himself on Thursday showed no interest in walking anything back. “I thought his comments yesterday were pretty accurate,” he said of Hegseth’s Wednesday remarks.
He then went on to repeat Putin’s talking points that he was forced to invade to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. “I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them to allow,” Trump told reporters. “I believe that’s why the war started. Because Biden went out and said that they could join NATO.”"
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This is the US President and leader of the free world, ladies and gentlemen. The time when America was the land of the free and home of the brave feels like distant, half-forgotten past.
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