John Bolton Says Russia-Ukraine Negotiations Are More Likely to Succeed ‘With Trump There’
John Bolton, the conservative foreign policy hand who served as one of President Donald Trump’s national security advisers during his first term but has emerged as one of Trump’s most strident critics in the years since, argued that negotiations between Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are more likely to succeed if Trump is in attendance.
Bolton advanced the argument during a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer in which the anchor asked: “Do you see any realistic, realistic chance that Zelensky or Putin would want bilateral talks on ending this war? And could anything productive come from that?”
“Well, I’ve heard actually that it wasn’t just Trump who suggested the bilateral, but that Putin had as well. And I’m not sure that’s accurate, but I think if they did have a meeting with just the two sides, just the Ukrainian and Russian sides, Putin would be fully capable of delivering an hour’s long lecture on his view of the last 1,000 years of Russian-Ukrainian relations,” answered Bolton. “And I am sure Zelensky would be fully up to refuting that for about the same length of time. I don’t think there’s any chance whatever that in a strictly bilateral meeting at this point, either side will concede anything.”
“I think there is more likelihood in a trilateral with Trump there that things might be different,” submitted Bolton. “But it certainly would be turning the traditional way of getting things on their head. And Trump has tried that before, for example, with his direct negotiations with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. That didn’t work out anything, and I’m not sure it would work out anything here as well.”
After Trump announced his intention to meet with Putin — which he did last Friday — earlier this month, Bolton said that the invitation to Putin reminded him of “Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to talk about the peace negotiations in Afghanistan,” even if it wasn’t “quite as bad.”
Watch above via CNN.
