Leon Aron

Author of Riding the Tiger, Roads to the Temple, Russia’s Revolution, and Yeltsin. tweeting from @AronRTTT; website:

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

@McFaul How about showing Dmitriev the ruins of a Kharkiv school after a Russian missile strike four days ago: 31 killed and 73 injured? Or a crowded railway platform in Dnipro hit by a Russian drone last week: at least 13 dead and at least 10
Injured?

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Europe position vis-a-vis Russia’s war on Ukraine will be much clarified once Brussels understands that Witkoff and Kushner negotiate not with Russia but for Russia.

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

For the perennial question of the reasons for the Germans’ approval of or indifference to the arrests, deportation and murder of their fellow Jewish citizens, here’s an in vivo test: the Russians’ silence in the face of the steady massacre of Ukrainians. Not the “alien” Jews but the Russians' closest ethnic brethren, whom Putin himself had called the “same people”. So the answer must be the same: police terror, fear and propaganda.

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Trump wants “peace”; Putin must have victory. The only way for these goals to align is for “peace” to be synonymous with Ukraine’s capitulation. Which is what Trump and his envoys appear to be working toward in their “negotiations.”

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Trump betrays Ukraine as Chamberlain betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938.
https://t.co/2gMN0dMxEZ
@thedispatch

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Putin is after a Munich: two fascist dictatorships, a know-nothing leader of a democracy, and a central european country to betray. Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Chamberlain’s Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, 1938. Russia, China, Trump’s U.S., Ukraine, 2026.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

True about history, but it's an accurate judgment of Putin. Trump doesn't care about the West or US interests, or if Russia destroys them, as long as it's profitable to him, and Putin can do that. Calling it a misjudgment provides undeserved cover.

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Elated by Trump’s lifting of the sanctions, Putin now considers America “on his side” and is even more likely to undertake a very limited invasion a Baltic member of NATO
to “settle” the war in Ukraine by a nuclear ultimatum ((https://t.co/rPhKzBXkNW).

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

One of the worst weeks for U.S.–Ukraine relations in recent memory.

I'm outraged by the Trump administration's decisions and their potential consequences for Ukrainian lives.

America should stand with democracies, not dictatorships.

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

This is likely the first time in the US history, when America sides with a dictator and aggressor against a democracy under attack.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

Trump is lying again. Putin started the war and has repeatedly refused to negotiate to end it. The US spent nothing like $350 billion. Half the money is not missing. Washington and Moscow are both significantly more corrupt than Kyiv. Putin, not Zelensky, is a dictator who openly steals elections.

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

Trump’s blaming the war on the freely elected president Zelenski, who is defending his country, while exonerating the Kremlin invader, dictator, and murderer of civilians, brings to mind Saul Bellow's calling one of his character’s mental state “the Okefenokee of his mind.”

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

And what was Trump’s quid for Putin’s quo? (See the two posts below). To continue leaning on Ukraine not to bomb Russia’s oil refineries? To dawdle with the transfer of the Patriot production licenses to Ukraine? To go on bullying Kyiv in the US "peace" mediations?

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

1.Apart from the moral repugnancy of a “highly successful discussion” with Putin, when the war criminal in the Kremlin bombs commuter buses in Ukraine, President Trump’s announcement of Russia’s delivivering a total of 4,000,000 tons of diesel fuel to the US and global markets:

[Leon Aron @AronRTTT]

2. flagrantly violates the West’s sanctions on Russia, and throws the door wide open to other countries to follow suit; makes a mockery of the just passed Congressional law that prods the President to impose huge tariffs on the countries that import Russia’s products.