Trump Would Likely Maintain the Status Quo in Ukraine if Elected: Mearsheimer
Russia's Medvedev called Trump an “establishment insider.”
Professor John Mearsheimer said in a recent interview that despite his bluster, Donald Trump would likely maintain the status quo in Washington and continue to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.
“The principal cause of that is that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s demands are not something that Trump can easily accept,” he told Shanghai Eye.
Trump repeated this claim during last night’s debate and said the war would end “before I even become president.”
Mearsheimer noted how Putin said earlier this summer that he has two demands before he even sits down for negotiations with the West: 1) the four eastern Ukrainian oblasts that Russia annexed are Russian territory; 2) Ukraine cannot join NATO and must be declared a neutral state.
Trump was asked during his earlier debate with U.S. President Joe Biden if he would agree to those preconditions, and he said he would not.
“So if he doesn't agree to those preconditions, there will be no negotiations, and there will be no settlement,” he said.
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Vice President Kamala Harris promised to keep up the military support for Ukraine’s lost war, which Trump has been critical of. He says he is going to end it but doesn't say how.
Ukraine is working overtime to appeal to evangelicals in Congress to make sure they support the war, even if Trump is elected.
The Washington Post reported today that Ukrainians believe that they could get evangelicals to “assist in their lobbying efforts for more aid.”
Trump’s base includes white evangelical Christians, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who wants Americans to fund his religious wars in Israel and Ukraine.
Johnson said his first task as speaker was to support Israel and, even while he opposed Ukraine funding at first, he saw the light when Ukrainians played to his religious beliefs.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, said Johnson’s support of billions more in war funding “came from his deep beliefs and not from political expediency.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council, downplayed the chances of improved relations between the U.S. and Moscow if Trump was elected and said despite the billionaire’s bluster, he is nothing more than an “establishment insider.”