October 2014, Polish ex-minister claimed Putin offered to divide Ukraine with Poland
I'm sure more than a few here remember this, but others may have forgotten or have not known about it. Both Tusk and Sikorski later backed away from the claim, but it's impossible to imagine that it was created from whole cloth, or that Putin would not have followed through if it was taken seriously.
Polish ex-minister quoted saying Putin offered to divide Ukraine with Poland
"Sikorski, who until September served as Poland’s foreign minister, was quoted telling U.S. website Politico that Putin made the proposal during Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s visit to Moscow in 2008 - although he later said some of the interview had been “overinterpreted”.
“He wanted us to become participants in this partition of Ukraine ... This was one of the first things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow,” he was quoted as saying in the interview dated Oct. 19.
“He (Putin) went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together,” Sikorski was quoted as saying. "
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-poland-sikorski/polish-ex-minister-quoted-saying-putin-offered-to-divide-ukraine-with-poland-idUSKCN0I92A720141020
Or maybe Putin was just joking. It now seems like a Trumpian sort of offer, a bit crass, over-the-top, poorly handled. Putin's gotten better at it since then.
Sort of like when he first started eliminating political opposition with bogus charges of corruption, bribery, and tax issues from distant courts and prosecutors, where the defendant could never gain control of their case. He's gotten better at it, and trump has learned from him. That we know.
What I haven't seen though is a realization that Biden has been more of a problem for Putin than for trump.
It's a win-win for Putin to put trump up to this, not that trump needed much coaching to be so stupid. Obviously, if trump had succeeded in secret, Biden is crippled, Ukraine's is weakened militarily, its corruption problem re-established, and the trump game continues. If trump fails, the US is shown to be corrupt (internationally), Biden is still tainted on the US right, and Ukraine's weakness is on public display, especially for the Russian audience (and that's already happening).
Impeachment and/or a Democratic 2020 win (with a get-tough candidate) cures most of this, but he can still play his narrative internally and keep trump for a constant US irritant and divider. I don't expect impeachment or an election loss will shut trump up.
Russian media has been pushing the badBiden/corrupt Ukraine narrative for some time now. I'd be surprised if there isn't more to it than that.
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