Trump is ready to do business with Russia if he becomes president - international expert Kraiev

He said this on the Espreso TV channel.

"Trump still has a narrative that Europe must defend itself, and the United States should only help. He calmly says that he is ready to let Putin do it. That is, he is determined to do business with Russia. There is no question of deterring Russian aggression. The only question that remains is how to bargain for more secure conditions for the United States itself. If Trump becomes president, the United States will not be ready to confront the Russian threat, and this is a disturbing message," Kraiev said.

According to him, reports that Trump could expose a NATO country to a Russian attack are a continuation of Trump's rhetoric from 2017 and 2018.

"He constantly said that European NATO countries should increase defence spending and invest more in their own defence. Even then, he threatened that America would not be able to protect them. That is, the wording was that America would not be able to help and protect them. Now we see that the same narrative is being presented in a completely different way, that America will say yes to Russia if it wants to attack. America will not stop Putin from doing what he wants," the expert added.

Unfortunately, we are still seeing the same tough, unpredictable, and sometimes downright risky rhetoric from Trump that he has always used, Kraiev said.

"As the election campaign, international relations, and international crises heat up, so does Trump's rhetoric. If you want to be provocative, you have to constantly raise the degree of your provocation, and in Trump's case, you have to raise the degree of your own nonsense," the international expert concluded.

• On February 10, former US President Donald Trump said that he would encourage Russia to do "whatever it wants" to any NATO member state that does not comply with instructions on defense spending