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Vladimir Putin
President Donald Trump made Russian President Vladimir Putin a very happy man last week, thanks to major U.S. concessions toward the war in Ukraine. For one, Trump told the Russian dictator by phone that there was no path forward for Ukraine to become a member of NATO, nor did he see Ukraine regaining any territory taken by force. Trump also said face-to-face negotiations to the end the war will begin immediately between Trump and Putin in Saudi Arabia, with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelinskyy nowhere in sight.
Financier and author Bill Browder told MSNBC's Jen Psaki Sunday, “I would say they're dancing the jig right now in the Kremlin. I mean ... they've gone through absolute hell for the last three years.
“They were supposed to win this war in three days. They've lost 850,000 soldiers. They've spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and they didn't know when and how this was going to resolve itself. And then, all of a sudden, it looks like it's going to resolve itself in their favor. This is just like sort of a gift—a gift from the gods—to Vladimir Putin,” said Browder.
He continued, “But the one thing I can say, though, is that it's a complicated story that's not going to get resolved just by Putin and Trump agreeing something in Saudi Arabia. The Ukrainians have to agree to something, and the Europeans have to agree to something. And so, to sort of have this, you know, sort of individual one-on-one negotiation between Putin and Trump really doesn't get Trump to his, you know, ‘solving this war in 24 hours,’ that it's a very complicated story with a lot of different objectives. And the Ukrainians potentially depending on how the Europeans decide things over the next couple of days, might decide to just carry on without American support and with European support, and perhaps with more European support.”
