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"On Point"
MINSK, 25 October (BelTA) – U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin hoping the Russian leader would make concessions to him as a friend, but Putin will not compromise national interests, military expert and political analyst Yakov Kedmi said in the latest episode of the V Teme [On Point] project on BelTA’s YouTube channel.
In mid-October, following a phone call with the Russian president, the U.S. president announced their meeting at a summit in Budapest to discuss the Ukrainian issue, but a week later, he announced its cancellation. Yakov Kedmi believes this demonstrates the U.S. president's political inexperience.
“The first question: the initiative for the meeting was Trump's, right? Presumably, when he, as always, spontaneously during the phone call suddenly decided to propose this meeting, he had some idea of why this meeting was needed, what its goal was. And he hoped, in his naivety and political inexperience, that during this meeting he would manage to convince Putin to accept certain proposals of his. I don't know which ones, it doesn't matter today. Why did he have such an illusion? I don't know. Presumably, in the following days, during preliminary negotiations, he understood: this meeting will not end the way he wants. How does he want it? For Putin to bend. And then it dawned on him that he won't bend,” the analyst said.
The expert emphasized that such changeable decisions and shortsightedness do not play into a political figure's hands. “It's always to a politician's disadvantage when their expectations from a diplomatic meeting are not met. It does not characterize him as a strong side and weakens him. So, it's better not to go to a meeting that will show he is an incompetent politician, misjudges the situation, misjudges his own strength and his partner, interlocutor, or opponent; it's better to refuse in advance and not be embarrassed. That's what he did. Because it's a naive, primitive notion that during a conversation one can forcefully make Putin make concessions. Putin's polite and quite friendly tone does not mean that he will make political concessions on what he considers the country's national interests, just out of respect for Trump or a sense of friendship, even if it exists,” Yakov Kedmi emphasized.
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