There is One Trump – Melania -- who Doesn’t Like Putin, Some Russians Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 22—Donald Trump may love Vladimir Putin, but his wife doesn’t, Russians say in commenting on the reaction of the American First Lady to her handshake with the Kremlin leader in Helsinki.  And she has good reasons, they say, which go beyond any concerns she may have about the compromising materials Russia may have on her husband.

           

            Since the film clips first appeared a week ago showing Melania Trump’s obvious distaste for Putin, various Russian outlets have suggested that she really must despise the Russian leader and have speculated on why that should be so.  Now, Viktor Shevchuk sums up what may be involved.

            In an article for Russkiy Yevrey entitled “Why Melania Trump Hates Putin, the Russian commentator says that her reaction to the Kremlin leader may have to do both compromising information Moscow may have on her husband and on her own ethnic own background (rusjev.net/2018/07/21/pochemu-melaniya-tramp-nenavidit-putina/).

            Born in Slovenia in 1970 which was then part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, the future American First Lady may have had no particular reason to like the Russians who again and again backed the Serbs against her own people and from whom the Slovenes pursued independence when that became possible.

            Later she became a model and actress and met and married the future US president.  The key event in her reaction to Putin may be that she was not in Moscow with Trump when he is accused of falling into an FSB trap.  “Bur already at the end of 2013, it became known from the press, that the couple for a certain time fell out of the public view,” Shevchuk says.”

            Then, Melania Trump became to appear at functions “without Trump,” and for long periods there are practically no photographs of the two appearing together.  “Apparently something happened in the family of the Trumps;” and the two went their separate ways as often occurs in such cases.

            “And so” the Russian journalist says, “it is possible that something happened inn Moscow and that the personal antipathy of Melania Trump to Putin has that as a reason. Not because [the Kremlin leader] is a tyrant and dictator [but because] compromising materials in fact exist.”

            Of course, it’s possible, Shevchuk concedes, that all this is simply the product of imaginative conspiracy thinking and that the real reason for Melania’s dislike of Puti is tha the has “killed several thousand people in Ukraine and Syria.”