The US president has blasted his former national security aide John Bolton for attacking the upcoming summit in Alaska
US President Donald Trump has lashed out at media, accusing them of quoting “fired losers” like his former national security adviser John Bolton on the upcoming summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders are set to meet in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. Their talks are expected to focus largely on finding a settlement in the Ukraine conflict.
“Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, accusing outlets of “constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil, ‘Putin has already won.’”
“What’s that all about? We are winning on EVERYTHING,” he claimed, calling the reports “Fake News.”
Bolton, who was fired from Trump’s first administration after 18 months on the job, has argued that inviting Putin to the US handed the Russian leader a win.
“It is a big win for Putin to come to the United States,” as he is currently a “pariah leader,” he claimed in an interview with Firstpost published on Tuesday.
Diplomatic relations between Russia and the US were effectively frozen in 2022 under the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as part of its strategy to internationally “isolate” Moscow. Trump has moved to thaw relations and to end the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow will “proceed from the political goodwill” extended by the US and Russian leaders to “resolve issues through dialogue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on the upcoming summit on Thursday.
Such political goodwill is in short supply, he added. “We will probably never get a sensible response, for example, from the Europeans.”
Russia has repeatedly condemned Western European NATO states’ continued military backing of Ukraine, as well as their recent militarization push. The national leaders in Western Europe are “trying to prepare Europe for war – not some hybrid war, but a real war against Russia,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last month.
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