Trump's Confusion Spells Life or Death in Ukraine. Does He Care? (Putin Does)

[DonViejo]

Ukraine needs desperately to know that Washington is on its side, as it's been promised in the past. Will the United States of Trump remain a reliable ally?

ANNA NEMTSOVA
07.14.18 9:04 PM ET

KIEV, Ukraine – It’s often said that Donald Trump’s opinion is swayed by the last thing he’s heard, and it changes again when he hears something else. So Sergei Markov’s version of what Vladimir Putin will tell Trump about Ukraine on Monday is worth considering closely.

Markov, a longtime pro-Kremlin political analyst and advisor to top Russian officials, told me when I reached him by telephone that he was sitting on an embankment in annexed Crimea overlooking the Black Sea, and then sketched out his sense of the Putin agenda for the summit in Helsinki.

“Putin is going to tell Trump the real story about what America has been doing in Ukraine, the story that Trump does not know,” Markov said. “American military advisers and officers have been fighting against Russia in Ukraine,” he claimed. “The United States has been funding Nazi groups in Ukraine; we hear reports that we have got a few American prisoners, U.S. officers – that would be useful for weighty arguments,” Markov said.

None of this is confirmed independently – or at all – but facts are much less important than impressions where Trump is concerned. “Putin’s goal is to shock Trump by true facts about this war,” says Markov, “so when the American President goes back, he will put an end to support for Ukraine.”

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