Donald Trump is still just becoming wise to the notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin might not be a good-faith actor on the international stage.
On Sunday, the president announced plans to send an unspecified number of Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine, and all but admitted that Putin has hitherto charmed and strung him along.
“We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need, because Putin really surprised a lot of people,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “He talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening. So there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it.”
With his promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours now broken by almost 175 days, Trump is slowly becoming disabused of his perception of the Russian president as a reliable partner.
In April, in response to the notion that Russia may be intentionally stalling negotiations with Ukraine to end the war, Trump insisted, “Nobody’s playing me.”
But later that month, when Putin conducted deadly strikes on Kyiv, the president posted exasperatedly on Truth Social, “Vladimir, STOP!” and, the following week, Trump wrote that “there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.”
At a Cabinet meeting last week, Trump vented in a similar tenor to his Sunday remarks, saying, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
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