Trevor Phillips called out a cabinet minister this morning for treading carefully over Donald Trump’s sudden scepticism towards Russia.
The US president said on Saturday Vladimir Putin “maybe doesn’t want to stop the war” and was “just tapping me along” during the White House’s attempts to secure a peace deal to end the Ukraine war.
The statement was a surprise, considering Trump has repeatedly backed the aggressor in the war and blamed Ukraine for the delay in ceasefire negotiations instead.
His apparent change of heart followed a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Vatican, their first face-to-face since the Ukrainian president was humiliated by the Trump administration in the White House in February.
Pressed over Trump’s U-turn on Sky News today, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, carefully avoided criticising Trump’s past remarks – while also praising his current stance.
Sky News presenter Phillips asked the minister: “Do you think there is a change of mind in the White House?”
“There’s no reason for President Putin to be ordering strikes on Ukraine,” McFadden said, adding: “In the UK we’ve recognised that all along.”
Phillips pushed: “What we’re trying to understand is whether the key player here, the United States, where its mind is.”
Asked if he would agree that Trump has finally just realised what the rest of the world already knew, McFadden said: “I don’t want to comment on every twist and turn coming out of –”
“This is not just a twist and turn, this is quite a big deal,” the Sky News presenter said. “If he has actually changed his mind, it’s quite a big deal, you can’t be neutral about it.”
McFadden said the change of tone was “right and welcome”, adding that he hoped the Trump administration can help bring the two sides together for a lasting peace.
“From a European point of view, from a UK point of view, we have seen from day one that this a war of Russian aggression and that’s why this concept of security after the fighting stops is so important,” the cabinet minister said.
The UK has formed an international “coalition of the willing” for countries happy to support Ukraine in the event of a successful US-brokered peace deal.
But Britain has made it clear that they could only support Ukraine effectively if they also had a US security guarantee – one Trump has so far been reluctant to give.
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