‘Trump may be finally be getting tired of Putin’s game’, analyst says • FRANCE 24 English

‘Trump may be finally be getting tired of Putin’s game’, analyst says • FRANCE 24 English

Ukraine’s president Vladimir Zalinski has met with Pope Leo I 14th of the Vatican. This comes ahead of the Ukraine recovery conference uh in Rome. The two men discussed the urgent need for a just and lasting peace. This confirmed in a statement from the Vatican. Zilinsky thanked the Holy Sea for its efforts to help Ukraine get back thousands of children allegedly abducted to Russia. Of course, it’s worth pointing out Vladimir Putin is under an arrest warrant uh an international arrest warrant on that issue for war crimes. Let’s bring in for more analysis Natasha Lindstead who’s professor at the Department of Government at the University of Essex in Colchester. Uh Natasha, thanks for being with us here on France 24. Um we’ve had the biggest uh series of attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began back in 2022. 700 plus drones, missiles fired uh across the country. Do you think Putin’s message to Donald Trump could be any clearer right now? No, exactly. I mean, he’s amping up uh the attacks on Ukraine and he’s basically ignoring everything that uh Trump wants him to do. I mean, Trump, I think, believed that if he just had conversations with Putin because they had some quote unquote friendship that Putin would listen to him. And I think he’s seeing very clearly that Putin isn’t going to pay attention to anything that Trump wants him to do. In fact, it’s the other way around. That Putin sees himself as a manipulator and can easily manipulate Trump. He’s strung him along. He’s got him to believe that he was interested in peace, that Ukraine was the aggressor at different times. Trump has echoed Russian talking points. Uh but I think finally Trump is starting to see Putin for who he is. That that he wants to control all of Ukraine. That he has uh no uh interest in in peace at all. When he had even Putin had called peace talks supposed peace peace talks to take place in Istanul, he didn’t even bother to show up. Uh so Trump’s growing increasingly frustrated and interestingly uh because Trump had been a little bit hesitant to really criticize Putin, he’s gone a little bit more critical of Putin, saying he’s frustrated with him, saying that all he says is BS and that he’s not interested in peace. So he he may finally be getting tired of of Putin’s game here. Indeed, that may seem the case, but of course uh just supplying a small amount of Patriot missiles to Ukraine. Uh someone on the inside Ukraine described what Trump has decided to send, I think it’s 10 missiles, as barely enough to fend off one night of average Russian attacks. Nonetheless, it is a good gesture. uh the fact that the um the the cutting of of military aid was came from uh Pete Hexith or someone actually behind him in the defense department. Is that saying something else about a kind of Putin sympathi sympathy level within uh the administration? Do you think is there something else going on there? Well, there’s always a possibility of course uh Pete Hegsth uh does not seem that sympathetic to Ukraine. I I know that um the vice president JD Vance isn’t involved in that decision-making, but he also didn’t care very much about Ukraine. So, it’s possible within Trump’s administration, there are those that don’t want to provide weapons to Ukraine. I think one of the excuses made is that they’re running low. uh that they need to have an ample supply of these types of Patriot missiles and defense air systems and so forth because they need to be prepared uh for any possible conflict that could take place in the Pacific that heath at least uh is more focused on what’s going on in the Pacific than than in Ukraine. And we saw that some of the signaling coming from the Trump administration showed that Ukraine wasn’t very important to them. And at times Trump was even incredibly hostile towards Ukraine. There was the time back uh in late February, they had this disastrous press conference where Zalinsky came to the White House and it looked like a setup. Trump abruptly claimed that he was going to be withholding aid only to uh reneg on that or turn back on that a week later. Uh but it’s definitely been a very shaky relationship between Trump uh and Zalinski. Uh but it seems to be improving at the moment. And I think that’s why even though the US is only providing Ukraine allegedly with these 10 Patriot missiles, which is only going to help them for one night, it’s a sign that things are moving in the right direction. And and Zilinsky had said that their most recent phone call or conversation that he had with Trump was their most positive yet. So he’s hoping that he can finally convince Trump that it really is Russia that is the aggressor and that Russia is not just dangerous to Ukraine, but of course to global stability. Indeed. And of course the the facts of course of the matter do speak for themselves don’t they about Russia’s aggression um Silinski’s mission in Rome then let’s come to that uh rebuilding rearming he’s met the pope got the pope’s blessing which is always a good thing uh but this uh conference coming up about rebuilding and also rearming no definitely and I think one of the things that Zalinsky has mentioned is they need air defense they they need all kinds of air uh defense systems whatever they can get because Russia is amping things up and What we see with Russia is when they get into a corner, uh, when they don’t think that the war is going well, uh, they they get bolder and the Russians are losing and willing to lose, I mean, thousands and thousands of of men. They were losing in 2024 a thousand men per day. For every square kilometer that the Russians gained, they they were losing a 100 men. And so Russia has had to incur, you know, huge heavy losses. And that’s why I think they’re trying to offer this heavy type of artillery which then would require Ukraine to have a much more robust defense system in place and they themselves are of course uh not just only exhausted by the conflict but are exhausted in terms of the supplies that they have. So this is one of the things that Zilinsky is trying to underscore that they need these types of air defense systems in place to deal with the increased uh Russian onslaught. Professor Linda there. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Natasha Lindster, professor at the department of government at the University of Essics in Colchester. Thank you as always for joining us.

President Donald Trump accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday of talking “bullshit” about Ukraine, saying that the United States would send Kyiv more weapons to defend itself. FRANCE 24’s Mark Owen speaks to Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor at the Department of Government at the University of Essex. She says that Trump ‘may be finally be getting tired of Putin’s game’.
#Ukraine #Russia #Putin

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