[coolso]

Whatever Trump was doing to handle Putin certainly seemed to prevent Putin from doing any Ukrainian invading. I think Zelensky and the entire world would prefer more Trump phone calls and less Putin aggression right about now.

[ZeroGravitas]

You know that the Russian army have been in Ukraine for Trump's entire term, right? One of his early big gaffes when running was to say "Russia won't invade Ukraine if he wins" and the journalist pointed out they already had.

[_-david-_]

Putin invaded in 2014 and 2022. Putin did not do additional invasions when Trump was president, he remained in the part of Ukraine he took when Biden was vice president.

[coolso]

You know that’s not what I meant (and likely not what Trump meant either) by “invasion” right?

You can prove anyone “wrong” by playing with definitions or getting super technical about things.

[Eupolemos]

According to Bolton, he believed that Trump would withdraw the US from NATO in a second term and that is what Putin was waiting for.

https://news.yahoo.com/john-bolton-putin-waiting-possible-13...

[VikingCoder]

Yes, because Putin was too busy enjoying the other things President Trump let him do.

Taken from someone else:

Trump had the US military abandon their bases in Syria and Russia promptly captured them.

Russia was caught paying bounties in Afghanistan for killing American soldiers. Trump did nothing.

After Putin seized Crimea, Obama put sanctions on Russia. Trump promptly got rid of those sanctions for his buddy, then declared that Crimea belonged to Russia, recognizing the legitimacy of their invasion.

Russia keeps creeping advancing the border with Georgia. They just literally move fences and markers at night and take land a few hundred meters at a time.

This happened during Trump's administration. Trump did nothing.

Belarus, which is a puppet for Putin, as he wants Ukraine to be, is run by his puppet dictator Lukashenko. Lukashenko won a clearly rigged election in 2020, leading to mass protests. A similar situation happened in Ukraine during Obama's administration, and we backed the protests and they ousted Yanukovych, and Ukraine was able to elect a free government that wasn't Putin's puppet. So when a similar situation arises while Trump was President, guess what he did?

The Trump Administration has gone AWOL on Belarus.

Guess who ran Putin's puppet, Yanukovych's campaign in Ukraine? Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Then they became Trump's campaign manager and deputy campaign manager.

Putin invades Ukraine, Trump calls him a genius.

He's a Putin puppet. Putin had a puppet President of the US. It's fucking insane that this happened. But it did. Wake the fuck up.

"We don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia." -Eric Trump, 2014

[coolso]

Sorry, what administration did Putin start a war with Ukraine under? Interesting that the one who was Putin’s supposed puppet, ended up being a better puppet master than the elder experienced statesman we supposedly have in office currently.

I repeat: I think Ukraine, and the world, could do well with some mean tweets and mean phone calls in place of what we have now!

[VikingCoder]

Cool, so we 100% attribute problems to whomever was President at the time? So George W. Bush is entirely to blame for 9/11, and Donald Trump is entirely to blame for Covid-19. Glad we cleared that up.

Or, maybe, prior administrations are at least partly to blame? And maybe you didn't even bother to read the list I gave you, of things Trump allowed Putin to do?

Cheers.

[Talanes]

Trump was useful to Putin, sure, but the amount of actual leverage Putin has over the leader of a rival nation is vastly less than he does over his smaller neighbors who share land borders.

The obvious gulf between how Trump was useful to Putin and how his actual puppets are useful to Putin is all people not disposed to agree with you can see. It doesn't matter that your tangible points are correct if people immediately discard it over your emotional appeal.

[ZeroGravitas]

Latest update: Trump's National Security Advisor says that Putin was waiting for Trump's second term, as after being re-elected he was going to withdraw the US from NATO:

https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru...