Russia slaps the U.S., but Trump won't slap back. Sad
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin announced that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia would have to shed 755 members. Most of those, admittedly, will be local support staff; of roughly 1,200 people employed by the U.S. government in Russia, 333 are U.S. citizens and 867 are foreign nationals, most likely Russians. So this isn’t quite the mass expulsion of U.S. diplomats that was portrayed in initial news reports. It’s “merely” a mass layoff of Russian workers who will now suffer because of the whims of their president. But it’s still a substantial slap at the United States — far more serious than President Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Kremlin meddling in the U.S. election.
Putin’s action is a sign that he has given up hope that the Trump administration will lift sanctions on Russians and otherwise conciliate the Kremlin, as Michael Flynn, who would later be named and then deposed as national security advisor, apparently hinted to the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak before the inauguration. U.S.-Russia relations, far from improving as Trump had promised, are in the depths of an icy freeze that is reviving talk of a new Cold War.
So far, Trump hasn’t conceded that dismal reality. His silence suggests he remains wedded to the fantasy that Putin is an admirable leader and a potential American ally in Syria and beyond, and his long-standing affection for the Russian dictator seems to have only grown stronger after the two men spent hours bonding with one another in Hamburg.
Just imagine if Rosie O’Donnell, “Crooked Hillary,” the “failing New York Times” or one of the president’s other supposed enemies had insulted him, however slightly. He would surely have gone ballistic on Twitter by now. But there is not a word about Russia or Putin in Trump’s Twitter feed, nor in his public comments, save for his ritualistic (and increasingly unconvincing) denials of any collusion between his campaign and Russia in the election.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-putin-expels-diplomats-20170802-story.html