Retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) offered harsh criticism of the Trump administration's failed negotiations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Bacon, a prominent critic of Trump's approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, has previously urged "moral clarity" and accused the Trump administration of sending "mixed signals" and appeasing Russia.
Bacon offered his critique in a response to a post on X by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum, which linked to an article on France24 about sanctions being eased on Russia, and said, "two days after Witkoff and Kushner met Putin, the Treasury Department partially suspended sanctions on Russia that were announced last October. What did the U.S. get in return?"
"Appeasement does not work. Putin is taking advantage of the naivety and gullibility of our negotiators," Bacon wrote on X, sharing Applebaum's post.
U.S. special envoy and former Long Island real estate lawyer Steve Witkoff and former White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Putin in Moscow on Tuesday for nearly five hours to discuss a proposed U.S. peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The talks concluded without a breakthrough or a compromise deal in what critics called a huge failure due to the "poor negotiating skills" of Trump and his administration.
"This is a complex task and a challenging mission that President Trump took upon himself," Putin said of the diplomacy in an interview published Thursday as he visited India.