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How long will President Trump let Vladimir Putin treat him like Joe Biden 2.0?
Yep: As our president works to stop the killing in the Ukraine war, Russia keeps trying to bluster its way into unilateral concessions.
The latest: After Putin’s negotiators agreed to a partial cease-fire, then instantly broke the deal, a top Russian diplomat now says Moscow can’t accept the deal at all.
Any halt in the fighting, insists Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, must “solve the problems related to the root causes of this conflict.”
In other words, he’s telling Trump to take his cease-fire and shove it.
After all, Moscow’s list of “root causes” include Ukraine’s mere existence as an independent country.
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Putin aims to boot Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and have the Kremlin run the country via puppet strings — or incorporate it into greater Russia altogether.
Solving that “problem” by giving Putin everything he wants is no-go for a permanent cease-fire, let alone a temporary one.
Nor would selling out Ukraine to appease Putin end the trouble, no more than handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler led to Chamberlain’s “peace for our time.”
Indeed, Putin has not only openly expressed his desire to rebuild the Russian empire, he’s acted on it, also attacking Georgia and threatening numerous other neighbors, from Moldova to the Baltic states.
Plus, of course, his first invasion of Ukraine on Barack Obama’s watch and his second on Joe Biden’s.
Now he’s seeing if he can con Trump.
The Kremlin’s also posing tough: It just called up 160,000 more conscripts in a show of preparing to fight a prolonged war.
Trump needs to call this bluff, and show Putin that flipping him off carries consequences.
Step up economic and diplomatic pressure.
Slap on those “secondary sanctions” Trump’s threatened.
Boost arms shipments to Ukraine.
And let Kyiv off the leash: Biden’s restrictions on Ukraine’s war-fighting clearly hampered its ability to resist Russia’s invasion.
Putin needs to learn that trying to play Donald Trump is a losing game, and pain is the only way to teach that lesson.
