Trump retweeted an editorial from the New York Post on New Year’s Eve about how “Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace”, which followed CIA chief John Ratcliffe briefing him about the agency’s assessment that Ukraine supposedly didn’t attempt to assassinate Putin. Several days prior, Putin informed Trump during their latest call that nearly 100 Ukrainian attack drones were intercepted near his residence in Northern Russia on the day that Trump hosted Zelensky.
Trump expressed anger when asked about this by the press and reminded everyone how he decided against giving Ukraine Tomahawks, seemingly implying that this might have saved Putin’s life. Ukraine predictably denied that it targeted Putin, with Zelensky lashing out at India and other countries whose officials condemned the attack that he insisted didn’t happen. Trump is now evidently of the same mind after Ratcliffe’s briefing, which convinced him that Ukraine didn’t attempt to assassinate Putin.
According to the CIA chief, an attack did indeed take place at the time that Russia claimed and in the same region as Putin’s residence in Northern Russia, but it supposedly only targeted a nearby military site. If Trump disagreed with this assessment, then he wouldn’t have retweeted the New York Post’s editorial condemning Putin of all people over this incident, conspiratorially speculating that the Russian leader made it all up “as an excuse to reject Trump’s progress on peace” and “spit in America’s eye.”
In the interests of transparency and wanting to prevent the CIA from manipulating Trump into once again escalating against Putin, Russia’s military intelligence chief handed over to a representative of the US military attaché materials containing the downed drones’ decoded route data. He also said that this evidence “unequivocally and accurately confirmed that the target of the attack was the complex of buildings of the residence of the President of the Russian Federation in the Novgorod region.”
Nevertheless, this evidence might not disabuse Trump of Ratcliffe’s false narrative since he’s still dependent on the CIA’s assessment of the downed drones’ decoded route data. Seeing as how they lied about the attack’s target to misportray Putin as trying to manipulate Trump, they’re unlikely to reverse their narrative, especially after publicly receiving evidence from Russia. They’re therefore expected to stick to the script and misportray this evidence as yet another attempt by Putin to manipulate Trump.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that Russia’s response “will not be diplomatic”, but if Trump doesn’t believe its side of the story, then he can be manipulated by the CIA into perceiving this as “unprovoked aggression” and thus misled into escalating further. The New York Times’ recent report on Trump’s Ukraine policy revealed that the CIA earlier convinced him to authorize them to aid Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries and its “shadow fleet” so the escalation risk is very real.
Therein lies the importance of convincing Trump that Ratcliffe lied to him. If that can be achieved, then the US likely won’t overreact to Russia’s retaliation, and perhaps Trump might finally force Zelensky to withdraw from the rest of Donbass as a concession for averting Russia’s retaliation. If Trump remains under Ratcliffe’s influence and Russia’s promised retaliation is more than symbolic, however, then he might be manipulated by him into being the one who reverses his own hard-earned progress on peace.
