Russia pushed back Wednesday at comments made by President Trump, who disparaged Moscow’s military capabilities and economy and said Ukraine could potentially recapture all of the territory seized by Russian forces since President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion over three years ago.
It marked a dramatic shift in rhetoric for Mr. Trump, who has previously urged Ukraine to make concessions to end the conflict, but there was no indication that the president would also shift U.S. policy to offer more direct support for Kyiv.
“Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger,'” Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday, shortly after he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form. With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option,” Mr. Trump said. “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.”
“President Trump heard about what is happening in Zelenskyy’s version, and apparently, at that moment, this version became the reason for such an assessment,” Peskov said in an interview with Russia’s RBC radio Wednesday morning. “We continue our special military operation in order to ensure our interests and achieve the goals that the supreme Commander-in-Chief Putin and the president of our country set in the very beginning.”
Peskov said Russia’s “premium markets” were no longer in Europe, but in the East, and that the country was economically stable.
“Russia is associated with a bear. There are no paper bears. And Russia is a real bear… There is nothing paper here,” Peskov said. “Russia maintains macroeconomic stability. Yes, Russia is experiencing certain points of tension and problematic points in different sectors of the economy, which is inevitably connected with those myriads of economic restrictions, sanctions which we face, and so on, with the global economic disorder. This is not just sanctions. Let’s not forget that the world has entered an absolutely unpredictable economic situation.”
Separately, in a briefing later on Wednesday, Peskov told journalists: “The fact that they are trying in every way to encourage Ukraine to continue military operations, and the idea that Ukraine can recapture anything, is, in our view, a misguided proposition.”
Zelenskyy appeared Wednesday before the United Nations General Assembly, making a plea that “we need to restore international cooperation for peace and security.”
“People are still dying every week, yet there is no ceasefire, because Russia refuses,” Zelenskyy said.
The U.S. is the most important contributor to NATO and the largest weapons supplier to Ukraine, but Mr. Trump wants America’s European allies to take on more of the continent’s defense burden – including supporting Ukraine. The president has, at times, echoed the Kremlin’s narrative about the war, alarming NATO allies, and it was unclear whether U.S. policy on Ukraine would change after Mr. Trump’s apparent rhetorical shift.
“He has acknowledged that the conflict is more complicated and he’s clearly frustrated with Putin, so that I think it is perhaps a success for Ukrainian and European diplomacy that that explanation has got through,” Neil Melvin, Director of International Security at the British think-tank RUSI, told the Reuters news agency. “The narrative around what he is saying has shifted but he still seems to be making it about distancing the U.S. from leading on the conflict. He’s putting it back onto Europe all the time.”
Melvin told Reuters that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric could shift again.
“I think we are always just one call to Putin away from a shift, and that’s why I think fundamentally the first eight months have eroded trust in Europe in the Trump administration’s approach, and this doesn’t restore trust,” Melvin said.
Despite Mr. Trump’s apparent shift on Ukraine, Peskov said the relationship between the U.S. and Russian leaders remained friendly.
“They have known each other for a very long time, and indeed they respect each other. They treat each other warmly,” Peskov said. “This does not prevent them from talking about sharp topics. It does not stop them from diverging on many issues. After all, each of them has his own interests.”
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