President Donald Trump was genuinely wounded over the refusal by Russia's Vladimir Putin to meet with him over Ukraine peace talks, The Atlantic reported — even as he publicly shrugged it off with a tough guy bravado.
Nonetheless, Jonathan Lemire wrote, it hasn't stopped Trump from moving toward "walking away" from overseeing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, abandoning Europe to fight a war that he repeatedly promised on the campaign trail he could end within 24 hours of taking office.
"Perhaps this outcome was inevitable," wrote Lemire. "Trump has long been deferential to Putin, skeptical of Europe, and steadfast in his belief that American foreign policy should prioritize business and trade. He has frequently affirmed Russia’s narrative about the war — that Ukraine provoked the conflict — and repeatedly demanded Ukrainian concessions for peace while asking little of Putin. His flashes of frustration with his Russian counterpart have been rare and brief." For instance, he threatened sanctions against Russia if they refused to take cease-fire talks seriously, but weeks have passed since then with no follow-through from Trump.
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Nonetheless, Lemire continued, Trump's frustration with Putin, who has reportedly mocked Trump to his face in the past, swelled again after Russia's leader declined to attend a peace talk last week.
"When Putin proposed a meeting with Zelensky in Istanbul last week, Trump hoped that cease-fire talks were on the verge of a breakthrough, one of the administration officials I spoke with said," wrote Lemire. "Zelensky traveled to Turkey, and Trump, already in the region for the first foreign trip of his new term, signaled that he would be willing to join if the Russian leader went as well. Instead, Putin blew off the meeting and sent a low-level delegation." Ultimately, he wrote, "nothing of note came from the meeting," and "Trump privately felt stung that Putin declined the chance to meet, the outside adviser ... told me."
The upshot of Trump's wounded ego, and his reported frustration with the inability to help end the war, wrote Lemire, is that "Europe will bear more of the responsibility for supplying Ukraine with weapons and guaranteeing its future security" — and if the U.S. backs down from its commitments to Ukraine, it will "provide further evidence of the Trump administration’s skepticism toward Europe."
