The world sanctioned apartheid out of South Africa.
Patience.
The whole reason he is doing all of this everywhere is because he can’t run the country when it’s so heavily sanctioned.
4 Likes
The Russians government lies like a rug, and so does trump, so who knows if any of these things were discussed. We can’t believe the claims of the Russians or the denials from the WH. That said, there’s no doubt donnie could have eagerly discussed any and all of it while promised US support as well.
It was not clear whether such a meeting would take place before or after the November congressional elections in the U.S.
Ha, if it was up to trump, it’d be tomorrow. But if those with a say in GOP electoral strategy have any influence over the desicion, it’ll be as long after the midterms as possible
1 Like
Trump: I strongly object to this rejection. I am with Putin and KGB.
1 Like
Masha Gessen recently said that Putin doesn’t really care about sanctions because they don’t affect him personally. It was odd to hear and didn’t make sense to me, and the host (can’t remember who it was) did not do a good job of getting clarification.
It’s gotta be so hard to maintain that “balanced viewpoints” fetish when just about everyone, including his own administration stooges, agrees that Trump screwed the pooch in Helsinki. Almost have to feel sorry for them.
Almost… but not really.
5 Likes
Trump’s National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said Friday that agreements between Russia and the Ukrainian government for resolving the conflict in the Donbas region do not include any such option and any effort to organize a “so-called referendum” would have “no legitimacy.”
But what did Trump tweet. If Trump didn’t tweet it it isn’t the official White House position. Mr. Marquis could find himself under the bus at any time.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that Rump is and has been a Russian asset. At some point, I would expect Putin to burn his WH asset. I believe the reason is because Putin has gotten everything out of Rump that there is to be gotten. He’s directed Rump to sow mass chaos and decrease American influence in all parts of the world. Done.
At this point, whatever there was to be mined out of this Russian scenario is played out.
5 Likes
I think Putin will have come to that realization by the end of this month. Recall that he invited GOP Senators over to work them on sanctions, he had Lavrov talk to Pompeo about normalizing relations, he and Trump had a game plan to blow up NATO and the G7. He wants a referendum on Ukraine, a handover of Americans who are negative towards the Russian gov’t. He got nothing out of it and Trump suffered a lot of blowback. Putin fundamentally doesn’t understand our Democracy but he will recognize that Trump can’t deliver. A win by the Democrats this November will seal Trump’s fate.
15 Likes
Someone in the WH actually thought that was a bad idea? Amazing.
2 Likes
At what point does Vlad realize his idiot is not all that useful?
7 Likes
“WH Rejects Ukraine Referendum That Putin Told Media He Discussed With Trump.”
Yeah, but did Trump reject the referendum?And did Trump tell Putin an invasion is okay? Too bad we won’t know unless the Russians tell us.
3 Likes
Would/wouldn’t it be nice for trump to finally give an account to people in the government who need to know such things…what was discussed at that meeting?? Does he even have enough recall to remember himself?? I think not.
3 Likes
I guess it depends on your point of view. On the one hand, Putin’s bond with Trump is stronger than ever, as Trump seems willing to go along with anything he says no matter what, and say it openly in public no matter how crazy it is or how much it makes him look like a traitor. On the other hand, Trump’s own ability to change foreign policy is being increasingly undermined by the actual “deep state”, the people who do the on-the-ground work of diplomacy and national security and aren’t putting up with this shit.
The question, as always, is who will win out. Trump is weak when actually confronting people, but he can fire them and get people like Bolton to do whatever he wants.
2 Likes
And what has Bolton done? not a lot. He issued an invitation that was scorned and ridiculed. Watch Pompeo though. Lavrov put the full court press on him to release Butina. I don’t think Lavrov gets how a Democracy and a society based on the rule of law works.
7 Likes
That was my take too. As far as I know Trump can not unilaterally release her from custody. Is that even possible? Can he pardon a foreign national indicted for acts against the USA?
5 Likes
And what will he do when he does realize it? Throw up his hands? Get out the Novichok?
1 Like
There is a line early in this article that I have to take fairly serious issue with, because it creates and supports an idea that is absolutely incorrect.
Anatoly Antonov, said the two leaders had discussed the possibility of a referendum in separatist-leaning eastern Ukraine during their Helsinki summit.
I lived in Ukraine for a bit more than 2 1/2 years in the south of the country, in an area that is, in Putin’s mind, part of “Novo-Rossiya”, and just a bit west of the area referred to as Donbas. I was there from 2010 through late 2012. Less than a year before the Maidan movement had taken on a full head of steam, but which was already well underway across the country. Social conflict was already feeling imminent. It’s part of why I left when I did. I visited Crimea more than once, and understood there was some simmering division there, and a good number of people who would have been happy to “rejoin Mother Russia”, but they were very much in the minority. Crimeans loved their autonomous status within Ukraine. It struck just the right balance for them.
In Donbas (where both the partial regions that have claimed independence, Luhansk and Donetsk are found), polling only months prior to the upheaval and unrest on that very topic of “rejoining Russia” showed that fully 70% of Donbas residents had no interest in leaving Ukraine. 25% said they “might consider rejoining Russia under the right circumstances”, and about 5% gave no opinion. Those numbers were fairly common throughout the southland of Ukraine, becoming less favorable to Russia the further west you went. In Odessa, more than 80% expressed no interest in leaving Ukraine.
So to make the statement that these “breakaway” eastern regions are somehow “separatist-leaning” is an absolute distortion of the reality on the ground. What you have is a population, generally of little means (and in many cases dirt poor… coal miners, farmers, general working class laborers), who are living under threat of arms. The small, militant core of people that were armed by Putin and his handlers, do not represent the greater populace in any way. The Russian military is in eastern Ukraine in the same way they were in South Ossetia. Uninvited, executing Putin’s own strategic agenda.
It also helps to reinforce another bit of misinformation. That a majority of Crimeans wanted to rejoin Russia. It validates the lie that the so-called “referendum” that was held in Crimea (and claimed to have been won by 97%… pure BS!) was somehow legitimate.
Neither Crimea (in a referendum held under the threat of arms), nor Donbas are actually “Russia-leaning”. A broad majority of “Russian speaking citizens” of Ukraine express a clear preference for their Ukrainian citizenship, and are in fact quite proud of it.
It’s really important not to muddy these difficult waters with misstatements like the one I quoted. It creates wrong and frankly unhelpful impressions of the situation there.
13 Likes
And then handed the country to Putin, unelected and uncontested, where he sits to this day. Stalin 2.0…
1 Like
I think he’s more about culture war, i.e. asserting Russian moral and cultural superiority over the decadent west by persecuting gays and lesbians, silencing dissident voices–there’s always been only one man, one truth, one party, one reality–and, of course, making the west look as dysfunctional and divided as possible. The latter wasn’t so easy when there were gatekeeper media, with editors and such. The disinformation about the US making the AIDS virus in its lab to kill off Africans was pretty much restricted to low-circulation English-language publications(all those awkward translations) from the USSR. Now, unfortunately, they can inject this poison directly into the western body politic.
4 Likes
Well, I won’t be happy unless and until Putin gets massive payback for this, once we get rid of this traitorous fuck we have as POTUS.
2 Likes