Trump protects Putin, turning peace talks into a sham, says politician

He expressed this opinion on Espreso TV.

"I don’t understand why Trump insisted on the meeting in Istanbul and said we need to see who wants peace and who doesn’t. Putin understood this perfectly and sent a secondary or tertiary delegation. But Trump will still say that for the first time in all these years of war, he forced countries to sit at the negotiating table. And what comes out of it is not that important because Trump again said that nothing will be resolved without him. So, they just checked the box. Now they will prepare for a higher-level meeting, as Trump said, and Rubio mentioned this too," Rybachuk commented.

According to him, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had been in Istanbul, then U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio might have discussed a possible meeting between Putin and Trump.

"But now Trump has taken it all on himself. Putin doesn’t need any explanations; Trump is explaining, 'washing,' and defending his actions, destroying all agreements. Meanwhile, what are we doing while they prepare their meeting with Putin? How do we destroy Putin’s obvious scenario: to imitate negotiations, meanwhile capturing as much Ukrainian territory as possible, and by autumn, given the realities, show a desire for peace? 

There are several directions. One of them is to work with Trump, explaining that Putin is using him. Trump invented this idea of a meeting with Putin. It’s interesting how he sees the success of this meeting? But we subtly sense that Putin will try to pay minimal attention to Ukraine at this meeting and will try to lure Trump into Russia’s embrace with other multi-billion, trillion-dollar prospects," the politician noted.

• Earlier, Trump said there would be no changes in peace negotiations over the war in Ukraine until he meets with Vladimir Putin.
• On May 15, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the possible date for a meeting between the U.S. president and the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin would be discussed after Trump’s return from abroad.