Russian President Vladimir Putin is “clearly a slow learner,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Saturday while discussing efforts to deter Kremlin’s regional aggression.
“This is a very complex situation because Mr. Putin is clearly a slow learner,” Mattis told Fox News’ Bret Baier during a panel discussion at the Reagan Defense Forum. “He is not recognizing that what he is doing is actually creating the animosity against his people. He is not acting in the best interest of the Russian people.”
Mattis derided Putin’s integrity just minutes after a speech in which he denounced “Putin’s duplicitous violation” of a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty, as well as the recent seizure of three Ukrainian vessels trying to pass through a critical waterway to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol. The broadside could preview the Trump administration’s posture towards Russia at the upcoming NATO foreign minister summit in Brussels next week.
“He is actually causing NATO to re-arm and strengthen the democracies’ stance, the unified stance of all the democracies together,” Mattis said of Putin.
Russian officials have cited NATO movements as a sign of Western hostility in an intermittent war of words over who bears responsibility for the ongoing tension.
“The NATO member-countries are arming themselves, with troops, heavy and armored vehicles being amassed in the Baltic countries, Poland and other countries under the guise of drills,” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said Friday, per TASS, a state-run outlet. “We lost over 600,000 lives for Poland. Now Poland is the key proponent of that plan and is ready to open a base and three command centers on its soil.”
Fomin was referring to the losses sustained when the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany on the eastern front of World War II. However, former Soviet satellite states generally do not recall those actions with the gratitude that Moscow deems appropriate, because that war inaugurated decades of communist dictatorship behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War with the West.
“We are dealing with someone that we simply cannot trust,” Mattis told Baier. “Russia doesn’t speak with one voice. We find that Russia, on the surface, tries to make certain very deceitful statements stick. They don’t stick. Their actions speak louder than words. And it has worsened the relationship.”
