Putin’s proposal for Ukraine is another trap for Trump

[Litwin]

Will Trump and USA interests be used by Kremlin kleptocracy again? or The republican establishment will succeed to keep Trump away from this issue?

"
After playing into Russia’s hands on Syria, the Trump administration now risks repeating the error in Ukraine, where diplomatic discussions over a Russian initiative are heating up. Moscow’s plan is to legitimize its invasion and control over parts of two eastern provinces by drawing President Trump into another bad deal.

Vladimir Putin’s pattern is familiar. He uses his military to escalate fighting on the ground and then approaches the West with a proposal sold as de-escalation. Appealing to European and U.S. desires for peace without Western intervention, the Russian president puts forward an alleged compromise. But in the details, Putin’s proposals are really designed to divide his adversaries and cement his gains.Such was the case in September, when Putin introduced a proposal for “peacekeepers” inside eastern Ukraine, where Russia continues to fuel a violent separatist uprising that has resulted in more than 10,000 deaths and displaced more than 1.5 million people since 2014. Ukraine, European powers and the United States all decided to engage Moscow on the idea."

Opinion | Putin’s proposal for Ukraine is another trap for Trump

 

[irosie91]

Putin is putin-----you expect Trump to put a bullet in his brain?

 

[bendog]

Putin is putin-----you expect Trump to put a bullet in his brain?

literally or figuratively?

 

[Peach]

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

 

[Litwin]

Putin is putin-----you expect Trump to put a bullet in his brain?

I EXPECT from Trump to do his USA president job, not the dirty deals with the thugs.

you know that only Trump stops the USA from selling Javelins to Ukraine ... question is why....

 

[Litwin]

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

Bush II ´d never allow Putler to take over 40% of "Syria"

 

[Litwin]

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

Bush II ´d never allow Putler to take over 40% of "Syria"

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

ps Bush was a professional politician , not a reality Star...


"What is Oligarchy?"

 

[Peach]

Really? Putin is an ogliarch, yes.

Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. “He’s a tsar. I think we’ve lost him.”

Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually “had” Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush’s eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.

 

[g5000]

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

Trump has been fellating Putin for nearly a decade.

Not surprising, considering he married a hooker from a communist country.

 

[Litwin]

Really? Putin is an ogliarch, yes.

Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. “He’s a tsar. I think we’ve lost him.”

Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually “had” Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush’s eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.

Under Bush time, Putler knew his place, Obama and Trump allowed to Putler things which only Koba and Hitler did before

A Subtle Similarity Between Hitler and Putin - The Moscow Times
https://themoscowtimes.com/.../a-subtle-similarity-between-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - For more than a month now, the global media, including in Russia, have been discussing parallels between Russia's annexation of Crimea and ...
Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler? - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/.../is-vladimir-putin-another-adolf-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful ..

 

[Litwin]

Trump must not be fooled by Putin as Bush II was.

Trump has been fellating Putin for nearly a decade.

Not surprising, considering he married a hooker from a communist country.

+1, as Anne Applebaum said Trump has the new "russians" mentality

New Russians - Wikipedia
New Russians - Wikipedia

The New Russians are newly rich business class in post-Soviet Russia. It is perceived as a stereotypical caricature. According to the stereotype, "New Russians" ...

 

[Peach]

George W. Bush: Georgia
Barack Obama: Crimea

What will President Trump allow?

 

[irosie91]

George W. Bush: Georgia
Barack Obama: Crimea

What will President Trump allow?

good question, peach------I have no idea

 

[Peach]

Really? Putin is an ogliarch, yes.

Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. “He’s a tsar. I think we’ve lost him.”

Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually “had” Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush’s eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.

Under Bush time, Putler knew his place, Obama and Trump allowed to Putler things which only Koba and Hitler did before

View attachment 162996

A Subtle Similarity Between Hitler and Putin - The Moscow Times
https://themoscowtimes.com/.../a-subtle-similarity-between-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - For more than a month now, the global media, including in Russia, have been discussing parallels between Russia's annexation of Crimea and ...
Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler? - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/.../is-vladimir-putin-another-adolf-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful ..

Why then did Putin cite his good relationship with Bush II, and bad relationship with Obama? I see Bush II has having been fooled.
In interview after interview with top U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats about the downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations, one date keeps resurfacing: January 2012.

That month Michael McFaul, President Obama’s newly appointed ambassador to Russia, arrived in snow-covered Moscow and almost immediately began meeting with opposition leaders and human rights activists critical of the Kremlin.

It was a provocative move at a sensitive moment when Vladimir Putin was already seething over perceived American backing of mass protests designed to smear him. The Russian president was also facing a wobbly economy as global oil prices plunged as he struggled to reclaim Russia’s influence on the world stage.

Mr. McFaul, an academic by training and a political appointee, had never served as an ambassador before. The sandy-haired Montana native was 49 at the time, and in the midst of his whirlwind first month in Moscow, he blogged that he’d started things off “with a bang.”

An investigation into what’s happened since, down to and including explosive charges of Russian meddling in the U.S. political process, suggests the fallout was greater than anyone could have predicted.


In interviews The Washington Times has conducted with several foreign diplomats and more than a dozen current and former high-level U.S. intelligence and national security officials, Mr. McFaul’s arrival in Moscow has been cited as being like a bee sting that enraged the Russian bear.

It actually “pissed off Putin so much” that the Russian president personally vowed revenge, said one former official involved in the intelligence debate raging over the causes of the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“The Washington establishment drastically underestimates who started this,” a foreign diplomat with access to Mr. Putin told The Times. “It was actually Obama and Hillary, not Putin. They sent McFaul over to Russia to try and overthrow Putin, and it made him livid.”

Mr. McFaul in an email exchange insisted it was never the Obama administration’s policy or goal to overthrow the Russian president. But he acknowledged outright that Mr. Putin “perceived us — of course, wrongly, in my view — as trying to undermine his legitimacy.”

“Could that perception have been one of the motivating factors for his attack on our sovereignty in 2016?” the former ambassador wrote. “Yes.”

Mr. Putin’s inner circle, including a mysterious Army general who would later rise in prominence to craft the Kremlin’s policy of “hybrid warfare” against Washington, already knew Mr. McFaul well before 2012.

A political scientist at Stanford who helped set up the Moscow Carnegie Center in the mid-1990s, Mr. McFaul had served as the top Russia policy adviser on Mr. Obama’s National Security Council during the administration’s fumbling attempt to “reset” relations with Moscow in 2009. By the time he showed up as U.S. ambassador, he was viewed by Mr. Putin’s allies as a henchman for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Just before Mr. McFaul’s arrival, Mr. Putin and Mrs. Clinton had engaged in a nasty public exchange over the 2011 Russian legislative elections, which triggered the largest Moscow street protests since the 1990s. Mrs. Clinton criticized the vote as “neither free nor fair” and called for a “full investigation.”

Mr. Putin countered by accusing Washington of supporting the opposition protesters. “We need to safeguard ourselves from this interference in our internal affairs,” he declared.

‘To punish Hillary’

The politics had become deeply personal, according to former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Mrs. Clinton.

How Mr. Putin would strike back at her wouldn’t be known for another four years, and it would come about in ways that may take Washington many more years to fully comprehend.

Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election were the “most successful covert influence campaign in the history of covert influence campaigns.”

“The Russians,” he added, “wanted to punish Hillary and erode confidence in the American electoral process itself.”

Back in 2012, Mr. McFaul felt the Kremlin’s wrath immediately. Within a month of his posting to Moscow, Russian state TV launched a major propaganda campaign blasting him with tabloid exploits of his meetings. Picket lines also sprung up at the U.S. Embassy, with a pro-Kremlin youth group even playing dead at the front gate and referencing U.S. involvement in the Arab Spring protests breaking out across the Middle East.

Mr. McFaul increased his security.

Speaking to reporters at the time, the new envoy said he’d never anticipated “the relentless anti-Americanism” that had taken hold in the Russian capital.

With the hindsight of five years, he told The Times this week that his “reaching out to opposition figures was deliberately and grossly exaggerated by the Kremlin and state-controlled media.”

Mr. Putin felt threatened by the Moscow street demonstrations, said Mr. McFaul, who returned to Stanford and is also a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.

“The Kremlin needed a way to discredit the opposition, so they accused them of being puppets of the West, Obama and me,” he said. “In my view, their propaganda efforts succeeded.”

‘Hair standing on end’

A former covert intelligence agent previously based in the region said Mr. McFaulunderestimated the threat Mr. Putin felt.

“We were not at war with [Russia], but they were at war with us,” the former agent said.

“McFaul made the Kremlin’s hair stand on end,” added a prominent Western journalist based in Moscow during Mr. McFaul’s ambassadorship.

In November 2012, 10 months into the McFaul ambassadorship, Mr. Putin raised the stakes significantly by appointing General Valery Gerasimov, a mysterious operator within the Russian military’s brain trust, as chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.

Now 62, Mr. Gerasimov hailed from a region of Russia home to the ethnic Tatars. His early career included one of Russia’s bloodiest recent conflicts, the second Chechen War, which pitted separatist rebels against the Kremlin and was one of Mr. Putin’s signature initiatives.

‘Hybrid warfare’

In 2013 the new military chief published an article in a Russian journal that widely has come to be considered the strategic foundation undergirding the Kremlin’s subversion policies in the years since.

Known in military commands as the “Gerasimov Doctrine of Hybrid Warfare,” the theory encourages blending conventional and unconventional warfare, essentially expanding military battlefield options infinitely — including into cyberspace.

“In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace,” the general wrote. “Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template. The very ‘rules of war’ have changed.”

The general also addressed the Arab Spring. Mr. Putin, who obsessed over the mass protests that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse, believed a hidden U.S. hand factored heavily in the “color revolutions” in former Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine and the 2011 popular uprisings that rocked the Muslim world.

The Kremlin particularly feared the power of Twitter and other social media platforms during the Arab Spring and their ability to mobilize opinion and organize protests even in authoritarian countries. In his writing, Gen. Gerasimov warned the Arab Spring-type events were “typical of warfare in the 21st century.”

It was here, intelligence officials told The Times, that Mr. McFaul — who had studied and taught at Stanford and prominently used American social media as a diplomatic tool to connect with the Russian people — and Mr. Gerasimov intersect. “McFaul was the essence of the Twitter culture, sunny California high-tech solutions and Democratic optimism,” a former intelligence officer said. “Gerasimov and Putin were two guys who studied the best way to smash you over the head with a rock.”

Fast-forward four years to the U.S. presidential election of 2016, and the Kremlin stands accused of using those same social media tools to sway the political debate during the campaign.

It’s not clear whether the U.S. intelligence community or multiple congressional investigations into Russia’s activities — not to mention former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe — can stop the Russians if they try again.

 

[easyt65]

'Putin’s proposal for Ukraine is another trap for Trump'

;p

Putin placed and increased the number of Russian Troops on Ukraine's border.
- Obama did nothing.

Our Intel warned Russia's invasion was 'imminent'.
- Obama did nothing.

The Obama administration refused to provide the Ukrainians with weapons with which to defend themselves.
-- Lawmakers: Obama not budging on giving Ukraine lethal arms
*** Obama armed AL QAIDA, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, THE PLO ? HAMAS, AND ISIS...but would not give weapons to a NATO ally for it to protect itself from Russian invasion?!

Obama ignored a promise from the US to help protect the Ukraine's sovereign borders.

--------------------

Ummm....FLASHBACK:

"Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reportedly declared at a NATO-Russia summit in 2008 that if Ukraine joined NATO his country (Russia) could contend to annex the Ukrainian East and Crimea."
-- Ukraine–NATO relations - Wikipedia


Much like Hitler in his book 'Mein Kampf', Putin TOLD the world what he was going to do in 2008 - THE YEAR OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT (yet he laughed at Romney' warning 4 years later)...and when he made his move, Obama sat back and watched (much like he did in 2009 when Russia was committing crimes in an attempt to corner the US Uranium Market and much like he did his last 2 years in office when Obama knew about yet hid Russia's attempt to hack the most Sr levels of the US govt - as evidence just released shows).

 

[rightwinger]

No worry

Trump will do as he is told

 

[Litwin]

Really? Putin is an ogliarch, yes.

Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. “He’s a tsar. I think we’ve lost him.”

Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually “had” Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush’s eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.

Under Bush time, Putler knew his place, Obama and Trump allowed to Putler things which only Koba and Hitler did before

View attachment 162996

A Subtle Similarity Between Hitler and Putin - The Moscow Times
https://themoscowtimes.com/.../a-subtle-similarity-between-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - For more than a month now, the global media, including in Russia, have been discussing parallels between Russia's annexation of Crimea and ...
Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler? - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/.../is-vladimir-putin-another-adolf-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful ..

Why then did Putin cite his good relationship with Bush II, and bad relationship with Obama?.

its part of Putler strategy, "divide and rule", dont trust to thug´s words, you made a good point about Georgia, the problem with Georgia could not hold a line, Ukraine can...+ don't forget Georgia after it lost this war became the N1 USA´s ally in the region. ps i do agree with Bush´d do much more, sanctions on the Putin´s oil export could put down his regime in a week

 

[Litwin]

No worry

Trump will do as he is told

by Vova Putler?

 

[Peach]

Really? Putin is an ogliarch, yes.

Bush had been trying to get Putin to relax his authoritarian rule to no avail. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” Bush lamented a few weeks later to another visitor, the prime minister of Slovenia. “He’s a tsar. I think we’ve lost him.”

Whether Bush or anyone else ever actually “had” Putin in the first place is debatable at best. But the story of Bush’s eight-year pas de deux with the master of the Kremlin, reconstructed through interviews with key players and secret notes and memos, offers lessons for President Obama as he struggles to define his own approach to Putin and shape the future of the two nuclear powers. The last few months have become another dramatic juncture in the volatile Russian-American relationship, with Moscow defying Washington by offering shelter to national security leaker Edward Snowden, Obama becoming the first president to cancel a Russian-American meeting in more than 50 years and then, suddenly, improbably, the Kremlin throwing the American leader a lifeline when his confrontation with Syria took a wrong turn.

Under Bush time, Putler knew his place, Obama and Trump allowed to Putler things which only Koba and Hitler did before

View attachment 162996

A Subtle Similarity Between Hitler and Putin - The Moscow Times
https://themoscowtimes.com/.../a-subtle-similarity-between-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - For more than a month now, the global media, including in Russia, have been discussing parallels between Russia's annexation of Crimea and ...
Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler? - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/.../is-vladimir-putin-another-adolf-hitle...
16 apr. 2014 - As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful ..

Why then did Putin cite his good relationship with Bush II, and bad relationship with Obama?.

its part of Putler strategy, "divide and rule", dont trust to thug´s words, you made a good point about Georgia, the problem with Georgia could not hold a line, Ukraine can...+ don't forget Georgia after it lost this war became the N1 USA´s ally in the region. ps i do agree with Bush´d do much more, sanctions on the Putin´s oil export could put down his regime in a week

Thank you.

 

[Litwin]

'Putin’s proposal for Ukraine is another trap for Trump'

;p

Putin placed and increased the number of Russian Troops on Ukraine's border.
- Obama did nothing.

Our Intel warned Russia's invasion was 'imminent'.
- Obama did nothing.

The Obama administration refused to provide the Ukrainians with weapons with which to defend themselves.
-- Lawmakers: Obama not budging on giving Ukraine lethal arms
*** Obama armed AL QAIDA, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, THE PLO ? HAMAS, AND ISIS...but would not give weapons to a NATO ally for it to protect itself from Russian invasion?!

Obama ignored a promise from the US to help protect the Ukraine's sovereign borders.

--------------------

Ummm....FLASHBACK:

"Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reportedly declared at a NATO-Russia summit in 2008 that if Ukraine joined NATO his country (Russia) could contend to annex the Ukrainian East and Crimea."
-- Ukraine–NATO relations - Wikipedia


Much like Hitler in his book 'Mein Kampf', Putin TOLD the world what he was going to do in 2008 - THE YEAR OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT (yet he laughed at Romney' warning 4 years later)...and when he made his move, Obama sat back and watched (much like he did in 2009 when Russia was committing crimes in an attempt to corner the US Uranium Market and much like he did his last 2 years in office when Obama knew about yet hid Russia's attempt to hack the most Sr levels of the US govt - as evidence just released shows).

you are right, Obama did nothing in order to stop Putler in Crimea/Donbas , don't forget that Obama got mandate on "not sending USA army abroad" from USA people.