"Trump Tells Americans
What Putin Wants Them to Hear
By
Bloomberg News
Donald Trump’s Russia policy has
been sounding very familiar to the Kremlin.
Since Trump’s phone call with Vladimir
Putin on Feb. 12, their first direct contact since Trump’s return to office,
there’s been a shift in US rhetoric that has seen the president begin to echo
specific Russian talking points on the war in Ukraine, according to a Bloomberg
analysis of his public comments.
Bloomberg used a Large Language
Model to scan more than 300 of Trump’s public comments between August 2024 and
mid-March as well as more than 3,000 social media posts from the president and
members of his administration since the start of 2025. The technique allows for
comparing meaning across large volumes of text, even if the specific wording
differs.
The results, which were reviewed
by reporters, showed a correlation between Trump administration contacts with
Putin and subsequent comments that echoed the Russian leader’s own positions on
subjects including the occupation, Kyiv’s goal of joining NATO and Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s political legitimacy...
“Trump parrots Putin,” said Fiona
Hill, who served as the top Russia adviser on the US National Security Council
in the president’s first term. “He wants to get close to Putin.”
Trump is seeking to unlock tens of billions of dollars in potential
business deals by remaking the economic relationship between the US and Russia.
And to do that he needs to resolve the war in Ukraine.
As a consequence, the US has made
concession after concession to Putin, even offering to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, a
Kremlin demand since it occupied the Black Sea peninsula in 2014 that
successive administrations — including in Trump’s first term — have rejected...
Feb. 12, 2025 The First Phone Call
...A few days after Trump was sworn into office in January, Putin told a
Russian state TV interviewer: “I cannot but agree with him that if he had been
president, if his victory had not been stolen from him in 2020, then maybe
there would not have been the Ukraine crisis that broke out in 2022.”...
“The media seemingly is
advocating more death and more destruction in this unnecessary war that
wouldn’t have started if President Trump was in office,” Hughes, the NSC
spokesman, said. “Russia didn’t dare invade a neighbor during President Trump’s
first term yet did so under Biden and Obama. President Trump is taking action
to clean up their mistakes.”...
Trump and Putin spoke by phone for about 90 minutes on
Feb. 12. The following day, Trump ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and
said that Kyiv’s aspirations to join the alliance had caused the war.
Feb. 13, 2025 Trump on NATO and Ukraine
Remarks
After Meeting with Narendra Modi
“They’ve said they cannot have Ukraine be in NATO. They said that very
strongly. I actually think that that was the thing that caused the start of the
war.”
...Putin’s demand that Ukraine never join NATO has been a central aim of
his February 2022 invasion...
Feb. 18, 2025 Saudi Arabia Meeting
Witkoff, National
Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio meet Russian
officials to discuss how to end the war.
Feb. 18, 2025 Trump on Martial Law
Remarks
After Executive Order Signing
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine. Well, we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where
the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at four percent
approval rating.”
Putin’s Position
“The Kiev regime does not allow
the very idea of cessation of hostilities because in this case the pretext for
extending martial law disappears. And if the martial law
has to be cancelled, it means that the elections, which were not held on time,
will have to be held.”
...While Putin has repeatedly denied
Zelenskiy’s legitimacy since the Ukrainian president’s term formally expired in
May 2024, the analysis shows that Trump only began raising the issue after he’d
spoken to the Russian leader.