Garry Kasparov, the chess champion and chairman of the https://www.renew-democracy.org/ (Renew Democracy Initiative) (with which I’m associated), has an excellent suggestion for how to respond immediately to Russia’s attack Sunday on three Ukrainian naval ships operating in their own territorial waters: Send a flotilla of U.S. and NATO warships through the narrow Kerch Strait to pay a port call to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov.
The move would be Trumanesque, recalling the Berlin airlift of 1948. It would symbolize the West’s solidarity with our embattled Ukrainian ally, our rejection of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, and our defiance of the Kremlin’s arrogant, violent, lawless behavior. And it would serve as powerful evidence that, when it comes to standing up for the free world, Donald Trump is not, after all, Vladimir Putin’s poodle.
In other words, don’t count on it.
So far, the most Trump has done in response to the Russian outrage is to call off a meeting with Putin at the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires — while offering,
as he burbled in a tweet, “a meaningful Summit again as soon as this situation is resolved!”
