(Zero Hedge)—US national security adviser Mike Waltz laughed off a question posed by a Fox News host on Sunday. Show host Jacqui Heinrich asked him whether President Trump is “being played” by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“That’s almost laughable. I’ll take President Trump in dealing with the likes of Xi Jinping, …Kim Jong Un, Putin, and others — certainly ahead of his predecessor,” Walz responded to the question.
Currently the US-backed 30-day Ukraine war ceasefire proposal appears stalled, but Trump and Putin will hold a key phone call on Tuesday. Putin has said any temporary ceasefire would only allow Ukraine to rearm, resupply and regroup its forces.
“And really, as both President Putin and Zelenskyy said on our first call just a few weeks ago, only President Trump could drive this to an end. We know who we’re dealing with on all sides,” Waltz continued.
“And we are going to engage in diplomacy. We are engaging in diplomacy,” the top Trump adviser said. “And that will involve both carrots and sticks to get both sides to the table, but to also resolve this in a way that is permanent and enduring,” he said.
The question from the Fox host was motivated at least in part from recent Washington Post reporting which claims Russian intelligence is seeking ways to sabotage the Washington-European Union relationship.
“Russia should work to weaken the U.S. negotiating position on Ukraine by stoking tensions between the Trump administration and other countries while pushing ahead with Moscow’s efforts to dismantle the Ukrainian state, according to a document prepared for the Kremlin,” WaPo wrote last week.
The report continued:
The document, written in February by an influential Moscow-based think tank close to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), lays out Russia’s maximalist demands for any end to the conflict in Ukraine. It dismisses President Donald Trump’s preliminary plans for a peace deal within 100 days as “impossible to realize” and says that “a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis cannot happen before 2026.”
Currently European leaders, particularly the UK’s Kier Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron, are pursuing alternate plans to back Ukraine quite apart from the Trump White House.
The Russian Defense Ministry has meanwhile indicated that Moscow will demand Kiev’s neutral status and that NATO can never accept Ukraine for membership.
“Almost laughable”…
This appears to be Moscow’s only and main ‘security guarantee’ that it wants in place: “Part of these guarantees should be the neutral status of Ukraine, the refusal of Nato countries to accept it into the alliance,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said Sunday. Of course, this is to include a ban on NATO building up military infrastructure in Ukraine as well.
But other Western allies are challenging the progress made, and are likely even trying to sabotage any potential deal. “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them,” French President Emmanuel Macron has said.