Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine submit to Vladimir Putin’s peace terms or face destruction in an angry meeting at the White House last week, it has emerged.
The US president, who spoke with his Russian counterpart shortly before hosting Volodymyr Zelensky, warned that Putin would “destroy” Ukraine unless a peace deal was in place.
Shouting and swearing, Mr Trump threw aside Ukrainian maps of the battlefield and pressured Mr Zelensky to surrender the Donetsk region to Russia.
Putin is demanding the withdrawal of Ukraine’s army from the crucial eastern territory as a precondition for peace.
However, the surrender of Donetsk is a red line for Ukraine, which has long refused to cede the territory, which Russia has failed to capture despite fighting since 2014.
Kyiv still holds about a quarter of Donetsk province. The land makes up part of the so-called “fortress belt”, a string of heavily defended towns that blocks Russia from making rapid westward advances towards the capital.
In the White House meeting, Mr Trump echoed Putin’s talking points, despite them contradicting his own recent assessment that Moscow was a “paper tiger”, European officials briefed on the meeting told the Financial Times.
Read the rest here.
Trump is far too stupid to be a Russian spy. But I honestly can't fault people for suspecting otherwise.
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