2017 meeting with Putin helps explain roots of Trump’s attitude to Ukraine - media

The New York Times reported the information.

Tillerson said that at that time, the Russian leader disparaged Ukraine, telling Trump that it was a corrupt, fabricated country. He insisted that Russia had every right to exert its influence over the country.

According to Tillerson, Trump mentioned that his administration was considering providing weapons to Ukraine. “What do you think?” Trump asked, to which Putin responded that it would be “a mistake.” He argued that whatever America gave the Ukrainians, he said, they would ask for more.

This was followed by a summit with Putin the next year in Helsinki, where Trump famously stated that he believed Putin over his own intelligence agencies regarding Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The New York Times notes that a close examination of the Hamburg summit and the months leading up to it helps explain the roots of Trump’s often disdainful attitude toward Ukraine. 

“The meeting in Hamburg fit into a yearlong pattern in which an escalating political grudge against Ukraine on Trump’s part became an opening for Putin to pursue his own aim of tempering American support for Kyiv”, the outlet notes.

According to the New York Times, animus toward Ukraine remains front and center in the final weeks of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. 

• Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated on September 24, that the United States should withdraw its involvement from the war in Ukraine.
• Nevertheless, on September 27, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in New York. Later, Trump claimed that he has a positive relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.