A veteran Fox News host has admitted he is completely baffled by Donald Trump’s latest comments about Vladimir Putin. Brit Hume (pictured), 81, the network’s Chief Political Analyst, said: ‘I don’t know what the president is talking about’ after Trump appeared shocked and angry to hear about the Russian leader’s latest airstrikes in Ukraine.

‘The president has always had a very odd conception of Vladimir Putin,’ Hume said. ‘I think that he thought that he and Putin could be friends and partners and could make deals together and so on. But I don’t think Putin has changed, I don’t know what the president is talking about. This is the way Putin has always been. He’s always been a particularly brutal dictator, wiling to take any measures he thought necessary to advance his interests.’

Trump made a U-turn on his usual support for Putin when he appeared shocked and angry to hear that Russian airstrikes had killed at least a dozen people in Kyiv over the weekend. ‘I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,’ Trump told reporters on Sunday. ‘I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.’

Trump also called Putin ‘absolutely crazy’ while writing on Truth Social. ‘I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,’ Trump wrote. ‘He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.’

Trump previously claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in a single day, and he is involved in ongoing negotiations between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Kremlin hit back against Trump’s latest comments about Putin by suggesting the US president was suffering from ’emotional overload.’ 

‘We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov (pictured) said when asked about the Trump remarks about Putin. ‘Of course, at the same time, this is a very crucial moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of everyone absolutely and with emotional reactions.’

Trump said he has always believed that Putin ‘wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it’, but warned if Putin continues down his current path ‘it will lead to the downfall of Russia.’ ‘This is a War that would never have started if I were President. This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not ‘Trump’s.” It’s unclear what prompted Trump’s sudden change in tone towards Putin.