Friday’s meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin was the talk of the entire world. Anne Applebaum, the American columnist and wife of Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, also weighed in. As usual, she did not hold back her insults directed at the U.S. leader. One thing is certain—she went too far.
On Friday, the first direct meeting in years between the American and Russian leaders took place. Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. The talks lasted over two hours; afterward, both politicians made brief statements to the media before departing the Elmendorf-Richardson base in Alaska on their respective planes.
In later remarks to the media, Donald Trump assured that the person primarily responsible for decisions on peace in Ukraine was the president of that country. That is why, this evening (Polish time), a Trump-Zelensky meeting will be held in Washington.
Yet the echoes of Trump’s Friday talks with the Russian war criminal continue to reverberate.
Applebaum Insults Trump Again
Anne Applebaum, the American columnist—and wife of Poland’s Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski—published her opinion on the Alaska meeting on August 16 in The Atlantis. Notably, no one from Donald Tusk’s government will be present in Washington today during talks with the presidents of Ukraine and the U.S.
Applebaum, known for her harsh critiques of Trump, had no restraints this time either.
“President Donald Trump harshly criticized President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. Twice he allowed the Pentagon to suspend previously scheduled weapons deliveries to Ukraine. He promised that when the current tranche of arms runs out, there will be no further deliveries. He cut, or threatened to cut, U.S. funds that had previously supported independent Russian-language media and opposition groups. His administration is slowly and quietly easing sanctions on Russia, ending ‘basic sanctions and export control measures that had sustained and increased U.S. pressure,’ according to a minority report in the Senate,” the article reads.
The columnist went on to accuse the U.S. president of submission to the Kremlin.
“The administration’s attacks on Zelensky, Europeans, and Voice of America were celebrated on Russian television. Of course, Vladimir Putin is aware of the gradual lifting of sanctions. As a result, the Russian president has apparently calculated that Trump—using the same language he once hurled at Zelensky—has no cards to play,” she wrote.
“He Acts Like a Happy Puppy”
The harshest criticism came at the end of the piece, where Applebaum used a particularly unflattering phrase to describe the American president: a “happy puppy.”
“There is not much to say about yesterday’s Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska beyond pointing out the mix of tragedy and farce. For Americans, it was humiliating to welcome, on their own soil, a notorious wanted war criminal. It was degrading to watch the U.S. president act like a happy puppy while meeting the dictator of a much poorer, far less significant country, treating him as a superior. It is frightening to think how badly Trump’s diplomatic envoy, Steve Witkoff—a novice completely out of his depth—must have misread his recent meeting with Putin in Moscow, if he truly believed the Alaska summit would be a success,” Applebaum wrote.