President Donald Trump isn’t willing to say he distrusts Russian President Vladimir Putin, amid escalating tensions over drone incursions in Europe.
Speaking to the press Tuesday during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. president provided paltry answers when pressed on whether he still trusted Putin.
“I’ll let you know in about a month from now, OK?” Trump said.
Trump has repeatedly extended a limp “two-week” deadline for Moscow to make progress on talks with Kyiv to end its deadly incursion into Ukrainian territory. Still, the U.S. president seems unwilling to apply any pressure on Putin, and now it seems his autocratic ally has earned himself yet another month.
Trump also appeared to play dumb about a drone sighting Monday that shut down the airport in Copenhagen. “Have you been briefed on the latest alleged drone incursions in Denmark? What do you think of that?” asked one reporter.
“Where? Where are they?” Trump asked.
“Denmark, Copenhagen,” the reporter clarified, asking for a response to the incident that the Danish government suspected was “possibly Russian sabotage.”
“Well, I have no response until I find out exactly what happened. I know about it. But they don’t know what happened. But we’re gonna find out very soon,” Trump said.
Earlier this month, Trump acted completely clueless about the more than a dozen Russian drones that entered Polish airspace. A spokesperson from the Kremlin has denied the “unfounded accusations” of drone incursions, and said such allegations were “no longer taken into account.”
Since then, there have also been incursions by what are believed to be Russian drones in Estonian and Norwegian airspace.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said it was “too early to say” who exactly had been behind the latest drone sighting, but Trump had been present at the U.N. General Assembly in New York earlier that day as NATO leaders condemned the Kremlin for the series of “escalatory” incidents involving drone and fighter jet incursions across allied airspace. NATO warned that it would use “all necessary military and non-military tools” to defend itself.
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