WASHINGTON – Thanks to President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin keeps getting away with murder.
Night after night, Putin’s military launches missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, killing residents in their homes and shelters, repeatedly violating ersatz deadlines imposed by Trump to end the attacks — yet has faced none of the “severe consequences” Trump once promised.
Monday, Sept. 1, was the latest deadline to pass, initially set by Trump in July.
“We’re very, very unhappy with them and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days, tariffs that are about 100%,” Trump said on July 14.
Tuesday, at a White House photo opportunity, Trump again made vague claims about a potential response.
“We’re going to see what happens,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “I had actually a very good meeting with President Putin. A couple of weeks ago, we’ll see if anything comes out of it. If it doesn’t, we’ll take a different stance.”
He did not mention the missed 50-day deadline or his threat of “biting” economic sanctions.
On July 28, at a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at one of Trump’s golf resorts in Scotland, Trump had actually moved up that 50-day deadline. “I’m going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There’s no reason in waiting,” he said.
Putin blew through that three-day deadline window, though, by Aug. 9, without consequence, except for winning a prized face-to-face meeting with Trump on American soil days later. Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin, honored him with a flyover and afterward claimed peace talks would ensue. Since then, however, Putin has done nothing to continue discussions but has stepped up his attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has pointed out Putin’s lack of interest in honoring Trump’s requests for a ceasefire.
“Two weeks ago in Washington, it was stated that by this time the Russians should be ready for real negotiations — a meeting at the leaders’ level,” Zelenskyy wrote Sunday, referring to the Aug. 18 meeting at the White House that was called following Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15. “Ukraine is definitely ready for this. But the only thing Russia is doing is investing further in war.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, who like other Western European leaders has been a strong ally of Ukraine since the 2022 invasion, also remarked on the missed deadline.
“It means that once again President Putin played President Trump,” he said at a news conference last week.
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa went even further, suggesting Trump was treating Putin with kid gloves intentionally.
“The top leader of the world’s foremost superpower is, objectively, a Soviet or Russian asset,” he said.
(The White House did not respond to a HuffPost query regarding the remark; Trump has in the past denied being Putin’s asset and has claimed, falsely, that no president has been as tough on Russia.)
Last week, following a particularly bloody attack on Kyiv, every single European leader who accompanied Zelenskyy to meet with Trump on Aug. 18’s show of unity condemned Putin and Russia. The White House, instead, blamed both Russia and Ukraine equally, and criticized Zelenskyy for Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.
Trump has, on numerous occasions, also claimed that he would know what his next steps would be on Putin’s invasion in about “two weeks” — a favorite time frame for Trump for any number of other goals that also have never come to pass, such as a health care plan promised eight years ago.
“We’ll let you know in about two weeks,” he said on April 27 when asked if he trusted Putin.
”I’ll let you know in about two weeks,” Trump also said on May 29. “We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not. And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently.”
After his meeting with Putin on Aug. 15, Trump said he had not yet thought of the consequences should Putin fail to end his attacks. “I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
“I think over the next two weeks we’re going to find out which way it’s going to go. And uh, I better be very happy,” he said at the White House on Aug. 22.
Three days later, again at the White House: “So we’ll see what happens over the next week or two. And at that point, I’ll step in very strongly.”