1. Picking up the phone: Almost three years after Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump decided it was time to re-establish direct contact between the president of the United States and Putin, a leader facing U.S. and EU sanctions, as well as an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for crimes against humanity and genocide. So he picked up the phone on Feb. 12 for a 90-minute chat.
2. Praising Putin like he deserves total respect: “I want to thank President Putin for his time and effort with respect to this call,” Trump said afterward. “We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II,” he said. “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”
3. Saying he’d “love” to see Russia back in the G7 (which would make it the G8, but who’s counting): “I’d love to have them back. I think it was a mistake to throw them out,” he told reporters in the Oval Office the day after the Putin call. He said the same in his first term. But that was before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
4. Letting Putin keep loads of Ukrainian territory: Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rejected Ukraine’s goal of reclaiming all the land Russia has taken since 2014 as “unrealistic.” That whipped the rug out from underneath Ukraine in any future negotiation. Hegseth also gave Putin exactly what he wanted by saying Kyiv wouldn’t be joining NATO either.
5. … then warning Russia has loads of Ukrainian territory: Trump himself then noted that Russia now holds “the cards” in peace talks “because they’ve taken a lot of territory.”
6. Conceding to Putin’s wish for no NATO mission in Ukraine: More from Hegseth, who said any troops from NATO countries who serve in Ukraine won’t be covered by the alliance’s “Article 5,” which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
