Day: November 16, 2024

A Vladimir Putin aide has warned Donald Trump that he is “obliged” to fulfill promises he made during his presidential campaign to bring peace to Ukraine.

The President-elect said repeatedly during his campaign to secure his return to the White House that he would put a stop to the more than two and a half years of war in Ukraine “within 24 hours.”

And Nikolai Patrushev, part of the Russian president’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Security Council, told the Russian newspaper Kommersant that Trump was duty-bound to act on his words.

Patrushev said: “To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.

“During the preelection period, he made many statements to attract voters to his side, who ultimately voted against the destructive foreign and domestic policies pursued by the current U.S. presidential administration.

“But the election campaign is over, and in January 2025, it will be time for the specific actions of the elected president. It is known that election promises in the United States can often diverge from subsequent actions.”

Newsweek has contacted Trump’s team for comment.

Patrushev was answering a question about whether the new U.S. administration amounted to “positive changes from Russia’s point of view.”

He went on to say that Putin gave a speech, at the Valdai Forum, an international conference held in Russia, last Thursday, which “sent a kind of greeting to Washington when there is a shift change there.”

Patrushev also said that Putin called Trump “a man” after seeing his response to the assassination attempt on him in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. This “coming from Putin is high praise,” Patrushev added.

But he went on to add that relations between Russia and the Western world could also go in the opposite direction, if the U.S. and the U.K. “consider sabotage on Nord Stream as one of many methods of advancing their economic interests,” for example.

Patrushev said the U.S. and the U.K. were behind the September 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which are still shrouded in mystery—and were planning others.

The U.S. Department of State has denied these accusations, telling Newsweek they are “completely and utterly false.”

A spokesperson also said they would not speculate about how the next administration will deal with the war in Ukraine.

Similarly, the U.K. Foreign Office said it “condemns acts of sabotage on critical national infrastructure and takes the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines seriously.”

A spokesperson added: “It would be wrong to speculate on any policy decisions that the incoming administration of President-elect Trump may make. We have welcomed sustained bipartisan US support for Ukraine, which has been absolutely key in the international effort.”

A Swedish investigation found evidence of sabotage on the pipelines between Russia and Germany. Moscow had initially accused the U.S. but probes by Sweden and Denmark were closed in February 2024 without identifying those responsible, although a German investigation is ongoing.

German authorities had reportedly issued a European arrest warrant in June for a Ukrainian national suspected of sabotaging the pipeline along with two others, using a yacht called Andromeda.

But Patrushev believes that the Ukrainian Navy has “neither the equipment nor the trained specialists to carry out a deep-sea terrorist attack” and said that “only special forces units of NATO countries could carry out sabotage of this scale.”

He said that in the future, new infrastructure, including marine fiber-optic cables that provide connectivity around the world, could come under attack.” The move would have the goal of sowing “chaos” in the global energy market, “including by destabilizing maritime transportation.”

Patrushev is considered one of the key drivers of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and served as secretary of Russia’s Security Council before being moved to the position of Putin aide. He is also chairman of Russia’s maritime board.

Update 11/13/24, 11:20 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from the U.S. State Department and the U.K. Foreign Office.