Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s denial of any imminent meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has triggered the right-wing, pro-Trump media ‘New York Post’, which warned the Russian President, stating that he won’t get away with insulting Trump.
In its editorial, the New York Post accused Lavrov of “dumping yet more cold water” on any chance for a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting despite Putin giving Trump renewed hope for a peace deal on the Ukraine war. “But that’s now looking like Lucy setting up Charlie Brown for another football humiliation,” the editorial read, referring to the famous US comic characters Lucy van Pelt and Charlie Brown, in Charles M. Schulz’s ‘Peanuts comic strip’. (Lucy is known for her crabby and bossy personality, while Charlie Brown is often depicted as a kind but somewhat unsuccessful boy).
The editorial said it expected “Putin and his top minions to soon regret their decision to make a fool of President Donald Trump.”
It said Lavrov’s statements contradict the gist of what Vice President JD Vance says Putin agreed to in Anchorage. Vance said Russia recognised it was not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv. “They’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine,”Vance said on the same NBC show.
Despite this, “Putin’s minions” have been insisting that no European troops can be deployed in Ukraine to secure the peace, and a veto over any post-war security guarantees for Kyiv. The Russians are also pushing hard for Ukraine to agree in advance that it will cede half of Donbas that Putin’s been trying to conquer since 2014, it said.
The editorial said If Putin was genuinely willing to discuss a peace deal, he’d “set those delusions aside” and to order Lavrov and his fellow toadies to quit it. “Instead, Putin has his minions outright trolling not just Zelensky, but Trump himself,” The New York Post said.
It said Trump gave Putin two weeks, and Putin’s displaying “the art of the no-deal” — and treating Trump like a sucker. “The Russian plainly thinks he’ll get away with humiliating the leader of the Free World; it won’t be pretty when Trump finally moves to dispel that delusion,” the editorial warned.
New York Post warns Putin: Expect to pay big-time for making a fool of President Donald Trump
