
Trump and Putin, pictured here in 2018, first met in person in Hamburg in 2017 (AP)
Published October 6, 2024
Trump had only been in office for seven months when he met with Putin in Hamburg
Donald Trump reportedly asked Vladimir Putin for his advice on whether the US should help arm Ukraine at their first in-person meeting.
The Republican presidential nominee, who has been vocal in his criticism of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, reportedly asked Putin “what do you think?” when the pair met in Hamburg in 2017, according to The New York Times.
Trump has wildly claimed Putin “would never have gone into Ukraine” if he were president and has touted his “very good relationship” with him several times.
The meeting — which took place three years after Russian forces invaded the Crimean peninsula — was “an opening” for Putin to begin exploiting Trump’s “escalating political grudge” against Ukraine in a bid to weaken US support for the country, officials who were privy to the exchange have shared with the newspaper.
Trump had only been in office for seven months when the pair met. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attended the meeting, which was “a masterclass” by Putin to mold the relatively new president’s approach to Ukraine, according to The Times.
Putin told Trump that Ukraine was a “corrupt” and “fabricated country” and insisted Russia had “every right” to wield its authority over the nation,The Times reported.
Trump reportedly told Putin he was considering giving weapons to Ukraine and asked: “What do you think?”
The Russian leader said that would be “a mistake.” Ukraine would only ask for more, he reportedly warned Trump. According to three American officials who were in Hamburg, the former president did not push back.
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SOURCE: www.independent.co.uk
RELATED: Behind Trump’s Views on Ukraine: Putin’s Gambit and a Political Grudge
The roots of Donald Trump’s animus toward Ukraine — an issue with profound consequences should he be elected again — can be found in a yearlong series of events spanning 2016 and 2017.
A meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and former President Donald J. Trump in Hamburg in 2017 helps explain the roots of Mr. Trump’s often-disdainful attitude toward Ukraine.Credit…Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Published October 5, 2024
On July 7, 2017, after President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shook hands in Hamburg, Germany, to conclude their first face-to-face meeting, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson walked out of the sterile conference room, removed notes from his pocket and gave anxious White House aides a summary.
“We’ve got work to do to change the president’s mind on Ukraine,” Mr. Tillerson said.
The secretary of state had just watched Mr. Putin, the former K.G.B. spymaster, put on a master class in seeking to shape the thinking of the new American president.
The Russian leader disparaged Ukraine, a former Soviet republic with aspirations of joining the European Union and NATO. Ukraine, he told Mr. Trump, was a corrupt, fabricated country. Russia, which had seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine three years earlier and backed pro-Russia separatists in a border region, had every right to exert its influence over the country, he insisted.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Putin that his administration was considering giving weapons to Ukraine. “What do you think?” Mr. Trump asked, to which Mr. Putin said it would be “a mistake.” Whatever America gave the Ukrainians, he said, they would ask for more.
Mr. Trump, who came to the meeting armed with hawkish talking points drawn up by his advisers, never pushed back, according to three American officials who were in Hamburg for the summit.
The meeting is something of a historical footnote to the Trump presidency. It has long been overshadowed by the summit with Mr. Putin the next year in Helsinki, when Mr. Trump famously said he took the word of Mr. Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of whether Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election.
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SOURCE: www.nytimes.com