Former Tory minister Graham Stuart has questioned whether Donald Trump is a ‘Russian asset’ after he suspended military aid to Ukraine in a massive boost to tyrant Vladimir Putin
A veteran Tory MP has suggested that Donald Trump could be a Russian agent.
Graham Stuart made the incendiary comment after the US President suspended all military aid to Ukraine in a massive boost to Vladimir Putin. It comes days after his appalling bullying of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and amid reports he plans to tear up sanctions on Moscow.
Mr Stuart, who served as a junior minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, posted on Twitter/X: “We have to consider the possibility that President Trump is a Russian asset. If so, Trump’s acquisition is the crowning achievement of Putin’s FSB career – and Europe is on its own.”
Mr Stuart had earlier shared a clip of US Senator Thomas Tuberville saying Mr Zelensky is “not even in the game” in deciding the future of Ukraine. The MP wrote: “Morally bankrupt.”
It comes less than 24 hours after Keir Starmer was warned in the Commons that Trump now “prefers to align itself with tyrants”. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey told MPs: “We’re all horrified by Friday’s scenes in the Oval Office for President Trump’s attack on the brave and dignified President Zelensky that everyone shocked and appalled except, it seems, the honourable member for Clacton (Nigel Farage).
“Nobody else watching those scenes could fail to understand that we’ve entered a new era, one where the United States prefers to align itself with tyrants like Putin rather than his democratic partners.” And he continued: “We need to reduce our dependency on the United States, because I say with deep regret, I fear that President Trump is not a reliable ally with respect to Russia.”
Mr Starmer shot back that it would be a “huge mistake” to cut ties with America. He said: “On the dependency on the US, I don’t agree with him. The US and the UK have the closest relationships of defence and security are completely intertwined.”
The latest controversy comes a week after a former Soviet intelligence officer claimed Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov”. The bombshell allegation was made by Alnur Mussayev, a former Kazakh intelligence chief, in a Facebook post.
Overnight Reuters reported the White House is looking to repair relations with Russia by giving sanctions relief. It could mean restrictions on Putin-friendly oligarchs are lifted.
And he had a dig at European leaders who met in London at the weekend to present a united front against Putin. Mr Starmer has said the US must provide a security guarantee if a peace deal is reached.
Failure to do so will give Putin a chance to regroup and strike again, he said. But the Trump administration is yet to give this commitment.
In a statement on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump again lashed out at Mr Zelensky, who has said peace was still a long way away. The US President wrote: “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer. It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelensky, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the US – probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?”
On Tuesday morning Deputy PM Angela Rayner refused to condemn Trump on Good Morning Britain. She said Mr Starmer will “continue” to speak with the President and was “laser-focused” on securing peace but would not say whether he’d call up the American politician and ask him to reverse the aid suspension.
Challenged over whether the government was “blindsided” by the US’s pause on military aid, the Cabinet minister said: “Well, the Prime Minister set out yesterday and I think he made it very clear that our focus – we won’t be blindsided or bounced from the focus of getting peace for Ukraine with those security guarantees.”