John Bolton, former national security adviser of President Donald Trump during his first term of office, said it is already clear where negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin are going on Ukraine.
“I think we know exactly what is going to happen: President Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations even started,” Bolton told CNN Collins.
Trump said on Wednesday that he spoke with his Russian counterpart, and the two agreed to start negotiations about the end of the war, who started three years ago when Russia invaded his neighbor. Later in the day, Minister of Defense Pete Hegseeth said that Russia would be able to keep part of Ukrainian territory that seized it and that Ukraine should not become part of NATO.
Bolton called those concessions a “full reversal of the American position” and a big victory for Putin.
“The positions that Minister of Defense Hegseeth announced in Brussels in Brussels – which I am sure would be amazed if Trump was not directly to Putin exaggerated in their telephone conversation – form conditions of a scheme that could have been written in the Kremlin,” said he. “Maybe they are written in the Kremlin and they got out in propaganda channels.”
He called those early concessions a big mistake.
“If you negotiate, you don’t announce what is acceptable for you before it starts and you give positions away,” he said.
He added that Putin also won something else that he wanted: negotiating Ukraine with Trump instead of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zensky.
‘Putin does not want to negotiate with Zenskyy. He wants to negotiate with Trump because he thinks he will get more out of him, and he is absolutely right, “said Bolton.
Bolton said there is enough fault to go around, and noted that President Joe Biden also wrongly covered the situation.
“But the surrender is signed by Donald Trump,” he said.
View the full interview below: