Tillis: ‘Putin is playing President Trump like a fiddle’

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing President Trump “like a fiddle” by shifting U.S. support away from Ukraine and warned that “history” won’t judge Trump well if he abandons Ukraine.

Tillis said Putin’s claim that he invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country is a lie and that Trump’s dealings with Russia to import hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel and waive sanctions are a mistake that the U.S. will come to regret.

“Russians are lying. Putin is lying. Putin is playing President Trump like a fiddle. And history is not going to look good on an America that failed to rise up and defend the Western world if Putin actually gets his way,” Tillis told CNN in a Monday interview.

And Tillis slammed Putin’s proposed trilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump as “absurd.”

“I believe that a summit with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, two countries who want to overwhelm the world, is absurd,” he said.

Tillis also questioned whether the Trump administration might be restricting military aid to Ukraine, despite official denials that it’s doing so.

“I want to know how the service has degraded over time — either intelligence sharing or the capabilities of Starlink,” Tillis said of reports last week that Ukraine had lost full access to Starshield, the military version of SpaceX’s Starlink, and to critical U.S. intelligence.

Tillis and three other Republicans, including Sens. John Cornyn (Texas), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), signed a letter last week calling on the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate whether any senior Pentagon officials ordered or had advance knowledge of a decision to limit Ukraine’s access to Starshield and U.S. intelligence.

Tillis and several GOP senators have also denounced Trump’s deal to import several million tons of Russian diesel, which they warned would undercut U.S. credibility with allies and do little to reduce domestic fuel prices.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Tillis and other senators during a call Monday that Ukraine’s data speeds on Starshield had not been fully restored .

Zelensky also told lawmakers that it’s becoming more difficult for Ukraine to acquire Patriot missile interceptors to defend itself from Russian attacks.

“President Zelensky also mentioned that a part of what they want are simply Patriot missiles that are coming from third-party countries that are prepared to provide it” with approval from U.S. defense officials, Tillis told CNN.

“I want to know who in the government is saying no to those transfers. This is not even taking it from our inventories,” he said of the Patriot missiles that Zelensky claims are being withheld from Ukraine.

Trump’s handling of the Ukraine war and negotiations with Putin have drawn criticism from other conservative-leaning sources.

The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on Sunday declaring that “Mr. Trump is now Mr. Putin’s best friend in the world, after perhaps China’s Xi Jinping.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) posted the editorial on X , the social media platform, and commented that “Reagan and Lindsey would be ashamed of this,” referring to former President Reagan and the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who sponsored a tough Russia sanctions package that Congress passed last month.

Trump on Friday waived the new law’s sanctions on Putin’s regime and its allies.