Former President Donald Trump, whose dealings with leaders of Russia and Ukraine inspired multiple investigations and an impeachment trial, says he wants to lead efforts to broker peace between the two countries as Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun to ease tensions between his country and NATO to escalate.
In two posts on his Truth Social website, Trump expressed concern over the apparent sabotage of the critical Nord Stream subsea gas pipeline between eastern Russia and Europe, and urged US leaders to “keep cool, calm and dry” in handling the situation stay.
He then suggested that he might be able to lead efforts to broker a deal.
“Don’t make things worse with the pipeline explosion,” Trump said. “Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), make a negotiated deal NOW. Both sides need and want it. The whole world is at stake. I will lead the group???”
Above: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) attend a bilateral meeting at the G20 Summit in Osaka, June 28, 2019. Trump has volunteered to lead the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in posts on Truth Social. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
The apparent sabotage of the pipeline, which supplies fossil fuels vital for Eastern European countries to meet their energy needs, was seen by some as an apparent threat from the Kremlin to cripple the economies of Ukrainian allies like Germany to ease economic sanctions that served to halt the Russian war effort.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the leaks in the line, which investigators say were the result of a series of explosions, “would not have a significant impact on Europe’s energy resilience.” He pointed to US efforts to end Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and accelerate the transition to renewable fuel sources to reduce the region’s vulnerability to Russian influence.
In recent weeks, the European Union and the United States have attempted to impose price caps on Russian oil to help those countries meet energy needs during the colder months, while limiting the country’s ability to profit significantly from its sales – a strategic stroke of luck for EU member states are caught between the desire for a quick end to the war and the need to keep their economies afloat.
Before the war, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment estimated that the country’s collective energy resources accounted for about 60 percent of its annual gross domestic product and 39 percent of its total revenue, according to figures compiled by Russian economist Igor Makarov.
July estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put the EU member states’ dependency on Russian exports of fossil fuels to cover their energy needs at between 20 and over 40 percent. In Germany alone, according to the IMF, a complete shutdown could result in a gas shortage of 9 percent in the second half of 2022 alone, escalating to 10 percent by 2023.
Whether Trump, if invited to mediate peace talks, would be successful is another question.
While Trump and his supporters have said they believed Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he still been president, Trump once described Putin’s invasion of the country as “brilliant,” adding that the United States should take a similar approach to it deal with the influx of migrants southern border with Mexico.
Trump has regularly urged the two countries’ leaders to meet and resolve their differences, and in 2019 told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he hoped he and Putin could “get together and solve your problem.” A clip of this statement garnered widespread attention on social media shortly after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Notably that same year, Trump was removed from office by the House of Representatives after a whistleblower described a phone call in which he was overheard pressuring Zelensky to disprove claims about the 2016 US presidential election in exchange for $400 million in military aid against Russia to examine separatists in the country. Some believe the Separatists were installed there to create a pretext for the invasion.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s office for comment.