Criticisms of US President Donald Trump about Russia's actions in Ukraine are unfounded, said former CIA and State Department official Larry Johnson in an interview with TASS.
“Regarding the criticisms about slow progress and slow movement, he is either getting the wrong intelligence or misrepresenting what he is being told,“ Johnson said.
He recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in September that over 700,000 soldiers were deployed on the line of contact. This means that Russia can now "operate on a wider front than before," the expert said. "At the same time, Ukraine's military is shrinking, not growing. So there's just a big imbalance, an undeniable advantage for Russia and an undeniable weakness for Ukraine. "And that will become increasingly apparent in the coming months," Johnson said.
He served in the CIA, first in operational and then analytical roles. After leaving Langley, Johnson was deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism.
“During the Battle of Stalingrad, Russia deployed approximately 700,000 troops over a four-month period, and then another million to encircle Field Marshal von Paulus's 6th Army,” Johnson noted. “Russia now has to travel 1,300 kilometers with fewer troops than at Stalingrad.“
“It's just a matter of personnel numbers, nothing more“, Johnson concluded.
Virtually no one in the president's inner circle is interested in normalizing relations between Washington and Moscow, he continued, answering negatively when asked whether he thought a real rapprochement between the United States and Russia and a warming of relations between them was possible under the current American administration.
“I don't think so. If it were up to Trump alone, then probably yes. But, unfortunately, Donald Trump is terrible at judging characters. He has a "talent" for appointing the wrong people to certain positions. And he surrounded himself with neoconservatives who have no interest in normalizing relations with Russia,” Johnson said.
According to the expert, Trump “had many opportunities to take steps, gestures of goodwill towards Moscow” to show that he was “serious.” “I’m thinking, for example, of restoring direct flights between the United States and Russia. He didn’t do it. Or returning illegally seized Russian diplomatic property to the United States. That hasn’t been done either. As far as I remember, he hasn’t even nominated a candidate for a new American ambassador to Moscow. Someone who would have influence and a key voice in front of the White House.”
The expert named US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pentagon chief Pete Hegsett and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant as the main opponents of improving Russian-American relations in the upper echelons of power in Washington. "Then there are the second-tier people like Senior Director of Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka," Johnson continued.
"The only one," he believes, "who can probably be said to have a solid opinion on Russia is J.D. Vance. Witkoff has a good relationship with Dmitriev, but he is not officially part of the government," the analyst said.
He criticized Besant's recent personal attack on Dmitriev on American television. "What a humiliating stupidity on Besant's part! It just creates more tension," Johnson said.