Owen Matthews Owen Matthews

Why Putin gets away with humiliating Trump

What happens when you repeatedly defy President Trump’s direct orders? Or lie to his face, again and again? How about when you break promises made to Trump, or slyly mock him publicly? 

Not many people on the planet are in a position – or possess the cojones – to put that question to the test. Other than Vladimir Putin, of course, who this week launched his biggest missile strike on Kyiv, even after assuring Trump repeatedly that he was serious about peace. That’s the same Putin whom Trump exhorted just weeks ago to stop bombarding Ukraine’s cities with a hard-to-misinterpret, full-caps instruction: ‘VLADIMIR, STOP!’

Turning fully on Putin and blaming him – not just for the ongoing war but for the invasion of Ukraine in the first place – would force Trump into actually doing something about it

Yet Vladimir has not stopped. Instead, Russia’s forces are not only apparently stepping up the intensity, but the sophistication of their deadly night-time missile strikes.

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