Analysis: Trump is not “demonizing” Putin so that he can reach a deal with him, former envoy to NATO says

 US President-elect Donald Trump is not “demonizing” Vladimir Putin because he wants to reach a deal with the Russian president, according to a former US ambassador to NATO.

“He has also not criticized Vladimir Putin, he’s not said that this is a Russian aggression that needs to stop,” Kurt Volker told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Sunday.

“My view is that the reason why he has not criticized Putin is because he knows he ultimately has to reach a deal with Putin, and so he is not demonizing him, but that does not mean that he misunderstands the situation on the ground.”

Volker also pointed out Trump had reversed the Obama administration’s policy of only supplying non-lethal aid.

“For years, we had a ban on lethal assistance to Ukraine which Trump reversed, and not because he was all of a sudden challenging Vladimir Putin, quite the opposite, he was even having a conference in Helsinki in 2018 where he was very warm to Vladimir Putin, but he was setting the stage for future negotiations.”

Some background: Volker served as US special envoy for Ukraine in the Trump administration from 2017-2019, until he resigned after the release of a whistleblower report alleging a cover-up by the White House of a call between the president and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.