“He is certainly not someone to be praised, and I think what we ought to be encouraged by is the reaction across the free world. Really what Putin wants more than anything is disunity, because disunity will lead to an ineffective response,” McMaster said on CNN, breaking with former President Trump, who has lauded Putin’s moves as “genius.”
“This is one campaign in his larger effort to drag everybody else down,” McMaster also said of Putin.
McMaster’s comments come after Trump earlier this week praised Putin’s tactics in Ukraine as “genius” and said Putin describing the invading troops as “peacekeepers” was both “smart” and “savvy.”