https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/vladimir-putin-is-playing-donald-trump-again-russia-ukraine-war<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Putin, meanwhile, has had the measure of his Washington opponents \u2014 and on Thursday, he demonstrated he understands Trump\u2019s psychology. Praise the man while deflecting him; pat him on the head \u2014 something Ukraine\u2019s passionate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy almost fatally forgot to do in his Oval Office meeting last month, prompting a hasty ejection from the White House.
\nThere was no firm Russian nyet to stoke the U.S. leader\u2019s anger, rather a teacher\u2019s applause for Trump\u2019s idea and effort.<\/p>\n
The temporary truce was \u201ccorrect\u201d and \u201cwe support it,\u201d the Russian leader said, but, alas, there were many sticking points. Ukrainian units had nearly been encircled in a salient in Russia\u2019s Kursk region and could be forced to \u201csurrender or die,\u201d he explained. Why should they just be let go? \u201cIf we stop hostilities for 30 days, what does that mean? That everyone who is there will go out without a fight?\u201d<\/p>\n
During the pause in hostilities, will Ukraine be able to mobilize fresh troops and receive weapons from the West? \u201cHow will supervision be organized? These are all serious questions.\u201d He then added: \u201cI think we need to talk to our American colleagues \u2026 Maybe have a phone call with President Trump and discuss this with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was all drawn from the playbook that he and his lugubrious Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have used time and again: Obfuscate, delay, muddle, throw in some whataboutism, be sorrowfully unctuous, but make sure to dangle a carrot.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“\u201cTrump is much more concerned about this deal than about Ukraine,\u201d Bondarev said. \u201cThat gives Putin leverage.\u201d”<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/vladimir-putin-is-playing-donald-trump-again-russia-ukraine-war\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[552,390,221,924,728,272,355,314,1545,316,315,170,311,619,158],"class_list":["post-16783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-conflict","tag-diplomacy","tag-donald-trump","tag-eastern-europe","tag-europe","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-international-relations","tag-invasion","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16784,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16783\/revisions\/16784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}