Trump savaged as Putin sees him as 'easy mark' to 'manipulate'

Vladimir Putin is "manipulating" Donald Trump, and the Russian president thinks his US counterpart is an "easy mark", former national security adviser John Bolton has warned. Trump "thinks he and Putin are friends", Mr Bolton, who served the White House from April 2018 to September 2019, told Politico, adding: "Putin doesn't think they're friends".

The 76-year-old, who branded Trump "unfit" to occupy the Oval Office in the foreword of his 2024 memoir, said the US President has continually misread his foreign policy dealings. He said: "Trump views international relations through the prism of his personal relations with foreign leaders. So he thinks that if he has good relations with Putin, then the US has good relations with Russia".

He added: "That's not true, but that's what he thinks. He thinks he and Putin are friends."

Mr Bolton, who was US Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, went on: "Putin doesn't think they're friends. He thinks Trump is an easy mark and he thinks he's manipulable.

"And he has been manipulating him as when Putin said several weeks ago, 'You know, Trump was right that if he had been president, there wouldn't have been a war in Ukraine'.

"Well, maybe so, maybe not. But Trump loved to hear that. Then they released the hostage, Mark Foley. Then [Aleksandr] Lukashenko and Belarus released another American hostage. This is the manipulation at work."

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has today poured cold water on the Kremlin accepting the terms of the Ukraine ceasefire deal currently on the table: "We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we can't accept it all in its current form."

Mr Ryabkov told International Affairs magazine: "As far as we can see, there is no place in them today for our main demand, namely to solve the problems related to the root causes of this conflict.

"It is completely absent, and that must be overcome", he added. Russia maintains the objective of its so-called "special military operation" is to "demilitarise and denazify" . has repeatedly claimed without providing evidence that is led by a Nazi regime - despite Ukrainian President being born to Jewish parents.