Former US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has said that “it’s clear the Russians want us out of many places”, among them Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Middle East and Eastern Europe in a video released on Reuters on Tuesday.
The U.S. should consider economic sanctions on Russia as part of a strong U.S. response, if it is true that Moscow offered bounty payments to Taliban forces for killing Americans in Afghanistan, John Bolton said https://t.co/M2KT7IjgzU pic.twitter.com/Hkm5smKOSN
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 30, 2020
Bolton said that if the Russians are indeed attempting to find surrogates to attack US forces, it merits a very serious response, such as declaring Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” in congress.
Bolton claimed that Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is playing “a weak hand very well” and that US President Donald Trump is unable to, allegedly, distinguish good personal relations with world leaders from “actual substance” of US relations with another country.
Bolton recently slammed Trump and openly voiced his hope the president he worked under will not be reelected for a second term. Trump responded that Bolton did not express such views when serving his administration.
Bolton also stated in the video that, if Russia really offered to pay Taliban members money for attacks on US soldiers in Afghanistan, “it was once clear this is not something that Soviet and US troops are engaged in.”
This last statement is in contrast to known facts about Cold War history, during which the US financed and armed the Mujaheddin during the decade long 1979 Soviet-Afghan War. For its part, the USSR financed and armed forces engaged in war against the US, such as the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975.