Putin doesn't always follow through on ultimatums — U.S. diplomat

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said this on Espreso TV.

“The West needs to reach the hard conclusion that we cannot keep trying to appease Putin. Appeasement does not work. If you appease Putin, if you roll out the red carpet for him, if you say you want to go along with whatever he wants, he just asks for more. That is exactly what has happened recently. When President Trump kept offering him concessions rather than saying, ‘That’s enough,’ Putin increased his demands. He even demanded rolling back NATO to where it was in the 1990s, as you just said. Completely absurd. He increased his demands by asking your soldiers, your warriors, to leave territory in Donbas that they currently control. He also increased his demands by insisting that the West should stop providing weapons to Ukraine. That strategy has not worked, and it means the West and President Trump need to change their strategy,” McFaul said.

The diplomat noted that the longer Putin delays and tries to make Donald Trump appear weak, the more the U.S. president will lose patience with the Russian leader.

“I also believe that Trump does not like to look weak, and he does not like to look as though he is being taken advantage of. The longer Putin tries to do that, the more tension it creates for President Trump and for people in his administration,” he added.

McFaul also emphasized that Putin almost always bluffs. In particular, the West has greatly overestimated his nuclear threats.

“Another point about Putin: it is a misconception that he is always a tough guy who follows through on his ultimatums. Yes, when he threatened to launch a full-scale invasion of your country in 2022, he followed through. That is true. But I think we have overestimated his threat, for example, to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine in 2022. That caused caution in the West at a time when providing more military assistance to Ukraine more quickly might have helped to end the war sooner, when Ukraine was on the offensive and Russia was on the defensive,” the diplomat concluded.

• Ukrainian President held a conversation with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Putin is pretending he does not want peace.
• Earlier, the Kremlin leader said that “Russia gives a 100% guarantee of security” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy if he comes to Moscow for a meeting.
• Vladimir Putin said Russia “will consider any troops on the territory of Ukraine to be legitimate targets for destruction.”