Revealed: Melania Trump's letter to Putin
The note, which was hand-delivered to the Russian leader by US President Donald Trump during their Alaska summit, told Putin 'it is time' to act.
The Telegraph London
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Sydney Morning Herald
27 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Putin, profit and peace: How Trump went from American eagle to cooing pigeon
What happened? How did he get from demanding a ceasefire under threat of 'very severe consequences' to '10 out of 10' with no ceasefire? And no consequences? 'It's bewildering,' says Peter Tesch, Australia's former ambassador to Moscow. 'Of course it fuels conspiracy theories that Putin has something over Trump. 'But I don't know why Trump goes to water every time he encounters Putin. He's enthralled. Putin turns Trump the bully into this cowed, servile individual. You see it time and time again. The man who said that we have to put an end to the killing has now accepted that killing should continue. 'The sight of American troops on their knees literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin in front of a plane with the word 'Russia' emblazoned on it really tells you where the true balance of power lies.' Even worse for US credibility, Trump gave the Russian dictator, a pariah in the West, a precious political gift. A professor of strategic studies at Scotland's University of St Andrews, Phillips P. O'Brien, observes: 'Trump has begun the process of normalising relations with war criminal Putin.' It was the first meeting between a US leader and a Russian one in four years. Putin has been invited in from the cold. Trump went further. He also appears to have given Putin geopolitical gold. Trump said that, instead of a ceasefire, the US and Russia would now 'go for' a full peace agreement. The Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity put to Trump: 'Most people think this ends with some land swaps ... and what Ukraine wants and needs desperately is a security measure that won't be NATO-related. Is that how this ends?' Trump: 'Those are points that we negotiated and points that we largely have agreed upon. I think we have agreed on a lot ... Ukraine has to agree to it, maybe they'll say no.' O'Brien's interpretation: 'So Trump has largely agreed on land swaps with Putin and now [Ukrainian president Volodomyr] Zelensky needs to act. Go ahead Ukraine – time for you to commit suicide!' Zelensky is bound to reject the suicide option. He's travelling to the White House to meet Trump and taking along a European cheer squad. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the European Union will join the negotiation. But while they're supporting Ukraine, their interests are not identical to Ukraine's. The British and European leaders want Ukraine to emerge from the war sovereign and intact, but they also want to keep Trump committed to the NATO alliance. This means that 'Ukraine's fate is hostage to the wider security negotiation with Europe,' as Peter Tesch puts it. We are still left to wonder how Putin turned the fierce American eagle into a cooing pigeon in just a few hours. And we have a clue. Although the news coverage largely overlooked it, while the leaders were meant to talk peace, they also talked profit. Loading Putin's entourage included Russia's big-money man, Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. He said after the summit that 'it's very important that President Trump outlined the significant economic potential of co-operation between the US and Russia'. Putin seemed pretty keen, too. 'It's clear,' he said, 'that US and Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential. Russia and the US can offer each other so much.' Trump needed no convincing. He volunteered to the press: 'We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think you know, everybody wants to deal with us. We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time. And we look forward to dealing. We're going to try and get this over with.' Get what 'over with'? He seems to have been referring to the Ukraine negotiations. This casts Trump's agenda in a different light. Putin may be waging a 'disgusting' war. Trump wants to make a killing of a different sort. He went into the meeting threatening to cut off Putin's petrodollars and came out wanting some of them instead. The Russian president's final remark at the post-summit press conference was the only time he used English. Just four words, spoken with an impish grin: 'Next time in Moscow.'
The Age
27 minutes ago
- The Age
Putin, profit and peace: How Trump went from American eagle to cooing pigeon
What happened? How did he get from demanding a ceasefire under threat of 'very severe consequences' to '10 out of 10' with no ceasefire? And no consequences? 'It's bewildering,' says Peter Tesch, Australia's former ambassador to Moscow. 'Of course it fuels conspiracy theories that Putin has something over Trump. 'But I don't know why Trump goes to water every time he encounters Putin. He's enthralled. Putin turns Trump the bully into this cowed, servile individual. You see it time and time again. The man who said that we have to put an end to the killing has now accepted that killing should continue. 'The sight of American troops on their knees literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin in front of a plane with the word 'Russia' emblazoned on it really tells you where the true balance of power lies.' Even worse for US credibility, Trump gave the Russian dictator, a pariah in the West, a precious political gift. A professor of strategic studies at Scotland's University of St Andrews, Phillips P. O'Brien, observes: 'Trump has begun the process of normalising relations with war criminal Putin.' It was the first meeting between a US leader and a Russian one in four years. Putin has been invited in from the cold. Trump went further. He also appears to have given Putin geopolitical gold. Trump said that, instead of a ceasefire, the US and Russia would now 'go for' a full peace agreement. The Fox News interviewer Sean Hannity put to Trump: 'Most people think this ends with some land swaps ... and what Ukraine wants and needs desperately is a security measure that won't be NATO-related. Is that how this ends?' Trump: 'Those are points that we negotiated and points that we largely have agreed upon. I think we have agreed on a lot ... Ukraine has to agree to it, maybe they'll say no.' O'Brien's interpretation: 'So Trump has largely agreed on land swaps with Putin and now [Ukrainian president Volodomyr] Zelensky needs to act. Go ahead Ukraine – time for you to commit suicide!' Zelensky is bound to reject the suicide option. He's travelling to the White House to meet Trump and taking along a European cheer squad. The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the European Union will join the negotiation. But while they're supporting Ukraine, their interests are not identical to Ukraine's. The British and European leaders want Ukraine to emerge from the war sovereign and intact, but they also want to keep Trump committed to the NATO alliance. This means that 'Ukraine's fate is hostage to the wider security negotiation with Europe,' as Peter Tesch puts it. We are still left to wonder how Putin turned the fierce American eagle into a cooing pigeon in just a few hours. And we have a clue. Although the news coverage largely overlooked it, while the leaders were meant to talk peace, they also talked profit. Loading Putin's entourage included Russia's big-money man, Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. He said after the summit that 'it's very important that President Trump outlined the significant economic potential of co-operation between the US and Russia'. Putin seemed pretty keen, too. 'It's clear,' he said, 'that US and Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential. Russia and the US can offer each other so much.' Trump needed no convincing. He volunteered to the press: 'We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think you know, everybody wants to deal with us. We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time. And we look forward to dealing. We're going to try and get this over with.' Get what 'over with'? He seems to have been referring to the Ukraine negotiations. This casts Trump's agenda in a different light. Putin may be waging a 'disgusting' war. Trump wants to make a killing of a different sort. He went into the meeting threatening to cut off Putin's petrodollars and came out wanting some of them instead. The Russian president's final remark at the post-summit press conference was the only time he used English. Just four words, spoken with an impish grin: 'Next time in Moscow.'
The Age
an hour ago
- The Age
Putin-Trump Alaska: US president's capitulation is a wake-up call for West
Starting with red carpets, military fly-overs and shared limo rides and ending with a stage-managed media appearance next to a fawning Donald Trump, the Alaskan summit was, regrettably, a victory for the world's leading autocrat, Vladimir Putin, and a loss for democracy. As a result, whether it's to defend their ally, Ukraine, or their own place in the world, the leaders of the West, including Australia, now have no choice but to act for democratic values. Putin and Trump: allies in autocracy. Credit: Marija Ercegovac If Putin had a wishlist, Russia's 21st century tsar can now check off a list of desired items: an elevated place on the world stage and recognition as a global player, an end to years of isolation of the Russian Federation, photo-ops fully curated for his propaganda, withdrawal of the threat of more sanctions, deflection of responsibility for the war onto Ukraine. Not a bad outing for an indicted war criminal who has systematically waged war on a small neighbour for more than 10 years, destroyed thousands of its schools and hospitals, reduced some of its towns and cities into urban deserts of ruin and rubble and kidnapped 20,000 of its children (for which the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant). Loading And, perhaps, most importantly from his perspective, Putin flew back to Moscow without any commitment to end his unilateral, illegal and brutal war against Ukraine. Quite the contrary, he was given a spotlit stage on which to repeat – without objection or even comment from Trump – his hegemonic demands that Ukraine basically surrender by giving up substantial amounts of its own sovereign territory, fully disarming, swearing off NATO participation, and dumping its democratically elected government and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. While Trump recently made a few frankly inconsequential and pathetic noises of complaint about recent Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, his lips were sealed in Anchorage. As silence is assent, this gives Putin a de facto green light to continue his savage campaign to destroy Ukrainian society, identity and statehood. In this respect, as reported by Al Jazeera, the average number of missiles and drones fired by the Kremlin at Ukrainian civilians has increased in recent months by nearly 1000 per cent to 5000 deadly projectiles per month. If one Alaskan hope was Trump pushing Putin closer to a negotiated peace, the exact opposite has occurred. Putin's violence has been vindicated, his brutality legitimised and his evil enabled. Peace was put on hold; Putin's agenda was advanced. Putin will now continue to send hundreds of thousands of Russian troops to their deaths to gain, in 2025, the equivalent Ukrainian area of greater Launceston. Australia remains the largest importer in the world of Russian blood oil. Territory, though, is less important to Putin, a former KGB colonel, than another key aspect of his overall agenda. Namely, he aims to alter public discourse into an alternative reality. In its Orwellian scope, Putin's Way sees propaganda take primacy over factuality, aggression become fully acceptable, and rules become entirely of one's own design and liking. As British author Peter Pomerantzev has written, 'It is so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible... We're rendered stunned, spun and flummoxed by the Kremlin's weaponisation of absurdity and unreality.'
