Bolton: ‘Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him’

Former national security adviser John Bolton said Wednesday that one of the reasons that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not move to invade Ukraine during former President Trump’s term in office was that he saw “Trump doing a lot of his work for him.”

He said in an interview on SiriusXM’s “Julie Mason Mornings” that he thought maybe in a second term, Trump would “make good” on his “desire to get out of NATO,” which would then ease Putin’s path forward. 

Bolton said he believes that the Russian president thinks “a weaker NATO” equals a “stronger Russia.”

He made similar comments during a Washington Post Live event on Friday, saying that Putin was “waiting” for a possible United States withdrawal from NATO and that former Trump would have likely made such a move had he been reelected.

He told SiriusXM on Wednesday that a lot of people underestimated Putin’s determination to get back into “control” and gain “perhaps actual sovereignty over parts of the former Soviet Union.”

“I think the West as a whole but the U.S. in particular, failed to create adequate deterrence to prevent him from concluding that he could get away with with invading Ukraine. Now he’s run into a lot of tropical resistance from the Ukrainian army which is heroic,” he added.

However, Bolton noted that Putin’s planning, operations and logistics with regards to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been “very poor.” But despite that, he will not negotiate with Ukraine unless it looks like he is coming from “a position of strength.”  

He said that Putin’s two-week long invasion, which many thought would be as easy victory for the leader, has seen him “weakened” and added that it “will calm nerves in a lot of the NATO countries”

According to Bolton, if Putin resorts to “steamroller tactics” in Ukraine, it would make places like Finland and Sweden reconsider their neutrality and think about joining NATO.

“For the Poles, the Baltic Republics, others in Eastern and central Europe, I think it’s going to increase their desire to have American and other NATO troops stationed there more permanently to provide forward defense against any possibility that Putin would conclude from successes he made in Ukraine” that he could invade others next, Bolton added.