From the Foreign Policy:
"There’s Less to Trump’s Ukraine Shift Than Meets the Eye
Europe will buy unspecified weapons for Ukraine, and Russia gets a long reprieve from sanctions.
By Christian Caryl, the former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.
The day before U.S. President Donald Trump’s long-touted announcement of
a shift in his policy toward Ukraine, he made a revealing comment to
reporters at Andrews Air Force Base. Explaining that the United States
would be sending weapons to the Ukrainians that European countries would
pay for, he went on:
“It will be business for us, and we will send them Patriots, which they
desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people.”
Really? Russian President Vladimir Putin “surprised a lot of people”? This is one of Trump’s favorite rhetorical tics—the
conjuring up of a mythical community (“people are saying”) that agrees
wholeheartedly with some highly questionable assertion. Who are these
people who were surprised by Putin’s lies and obfuscations about the
war? Very few of them were probably national security experts or
professional Russia watchers; it would be very hard to find anyone in
Ukraine, the former Soviet Union, or much of Europe who might have been
caught off guard by Putin’s deft avoidance of any diplomatic commitments
that might have constrained his prosecution of the war..."
In this respect, General Ben Hodges rightfully asked why Pres. Trump doesn't say that the final goal is Russia to live within its own borders, like any other sovereign state, and stops attacking its neighbors.
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