John Bolton, former national security advisor to President Donald Trump during his first term in office, said it’s already clear where negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine are headed.
“I think we know exactly what’s gonna happen: President Trump has effectively surrendered to Putin before the negotiations have even begun,” Bolton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Trump on Wednesday said he spoke with his Russian counterpart, and the two agreed to start negotiations on ending the war, which began three years ago when Russia invaded its neighbor. Later in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Russia should be able to keep some of the Ukrainian territory it has seized and that Ukraine should not become part of NATO.
Bolton called those concessions a “complete reversal of the U.S. position” and a major victory for Putin.
“The positions that Defense Secretary Hegseth announced in Brussels ― which I’m sure I’d be stunned if Trump didn’t convey them directly to Putin in their phone call ― constitute terms of a settlement that could’ve been written in the Kremlin,” he said. “Maybe they were written in the Kremlin and got out in propaganda channels.”
He called those early concessions a big mistake.
“If you’re going into a negotiation, you don’t announce what’s acceptable to you before it begins and give away positions,” he said.
He added that Putin also won something else he wanted: to negotiate over Ukraine with Trump rather than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Putin doesn’t wanna negotiate with Zelenskyy. He wants to negotiate with Trump because he thinks he’ll get more out of him, and he’s absolutely right,” Bolton said.
Bolton said there is plenty of blame to go around, noting that President Joe Biden also mishandled the situation.
“But the surrender is gonna be signed by Donald Trump,” he said.
Check out the full interview below:
