Putin tells Trump that he has no plans to attack Europe

WashingtonUS President Donald Trump spoke by phone this Tuesday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, according to the Kremlin in a press conference. The White House has neither confirmed nor denied the conversation, in which the Russian leader told the Republican that he has no plans to attack Europe, even though he continues to apply hybrid warfare tactics, as has been seen recently in Germany.

Trump has also once again asked Putin to quickly end the war in Ukraine so as to fully restore Washington-Moscow relations. "Trump clearly underscored the desirability of ending the conflict as soon as possible, which would immediately open the possibility of restoring relations between the United States and Russia," Russian advisor Yuri Ushakov told the press. Of the numerous calls that Trump and Putin have held, this is the first time that it is the Kremlin that breaks the news despite the Republican's verbal incontinence on Truth Social.

Last weekend, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, traveled to Moscow to try to unblock the peace process in Ukraine. According to Ushakov, the meeting with the American diplomatic tandem was assessed "positively" by the two leaders and Putin had commented to Trump on what he could do to end the conflict. Witkoff and Kushner also traveled to Ukraine this weekend, where they met up to three times with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During the third meeting, British, French, and German advisors also joined in.

Although this latest contact is wrapped under the label of the Ukrainian issue, it does not go unnoticed that it is the second diplomatic visit in less than two weeks, just after at the end of August the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, flew in secret to Russia. A meeting that remains a mystery, but that raised eyebrows in Brussels. It also did not please European allies that last week the White House invited the Russian Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov, to the G-20 by surprise. While Washington set a chair for the Russian representative in North Carolina, in Kyrgyzstan, Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian shared a table. At the Central Asia summit, no American spokesperson had been invited.

The increase in contacts between Washington and Moscow continues to unsettle European partners, especially due to the position the United States is adopting. It is noteworthy that in recent weeks, everything that has been seen regarding these new movements shows Trump's tendency to move closer to Putin. And not the other way around. Furthermore, it occurs at a time when the White House is waist-deep in the Iranian quagmire, with inflation skyrocketing due to the impossibility of reopening Hormuz and with the strength of the dollar being questioned after the country's debt has soared to 40 trillion dollars. To make matters worse, the Pentagon's Patriot missile reserves are at a critical point and there is no short-term prospect of being able to solve it. The resumption of contacts with Putin could well be because Trump really wants to reactivate the diplomatic process in Ukraine in an attempt to sweep the diplomatic fiasco with the Iranians under the rug. Since the Alaska summit, where the American president met face-to-face with the Russian, Washington's mediation had been completely frozen.

Trump's approach to Putin at the beginning of his second term already put Europeans on guard, especially after the tycoon's repeated attacks against NATO. But the new round of contacts with the Kremlin is now more disturbing due to how Moscow has been testing the European temper by escalating pressure on the border. The explosive drone found at Leipzig airport is the latest episode of a hybrid war that Russia has been consistently executing for a year and a half.