Almost three years into Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine – a war he appeared to be in serious danger of losing during the first 12 months – the Russian leader finds himself with an unexpected ally in Washington. Donald Trump appears determined not only to end the war on Putin’s terms, but to take down Volodymyr Zelensky’s government in the process.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said of the Ukrainian leadership at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on 18 February. “You could have made a deal.” In reality, of course, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, with Zelensky rallying his citizens to defend the nation against the full-scale Russian assault from the land, sea and air. An early round of ceasefire talks fell apart in the spring of 2022 as the two sides failed to agree terms and the Russian military’s massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian cities of Bucha and Irpin was revealed.
On 19 February, Trump escalated his attacks on Zelensky, calling him a “Dictator without Elections” in a post on his Truth Social platform and warning the Ukrainian president that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left”. Trump derided Zelensky as a “modestly successful comedian” and a “terrible” leader who wants to continue the war to “keep the ‘gravy train’ going”.
These are Russian talking points. Whether he knows it or not – or more likely just does not care – Trump is legitimising Putin’s warped argument for starting the war, according to which Russia is not the aggressor determined to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign state, but simply defending its own legitimate interests. In this parallel reality, Zelensky’s administration is portrayed as a puppet regime, following orders from the US and its Western allies in order to weaken Russia and bolster the nefarious defence-industrial complex.
“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Zelensky said at a briefing for reporters in Kyiv on 19 February, where he pointed out some of the most obvious errors in Trump’s recent statements. His approval rating is not 4 per cent, as Trump has recently claimed, but around 57 per cent, according to a poll conducted earlier this month, comparable to the US president. As any of Trump’s national security team should be able to tell him, elections have not been held in Ukraine since the start of the war because the country is currently under martial law, with around 20 per cent of its territory under Russian occupation and Ukrainian towns and cities under continuing bombardment. With the Russian military systematically targeting Ukrainian hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure, the Ukrainian government believes, rightly, that the polling stations needed to conduct an election would be vulnerable to attack.
“We have seen this disinformation. We understand that it is coming from Russia,” said Zelensky, lamenting that Trump “lives in the disinformation space”. He also pushed back on the Trump administration’s barely concealed attempt at extortion in recent days as he rejected the US claim to 50 per cent ownership of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals – worth approximately $500bn – in return for the American military and economic aid provided since the start of the war. In fact, Zelensky noted, Washington has supplied a fraction of that amount, around $67bn in weaponry and $31.5bn in other support. “I defend Ukraine, I can’t sell our country,” he said.
The Kremlin’s propagandists, on the other hand, have responded with barely contained glee. Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent state television host, for instance, praised the call between Putin and Trump on 12 February as a “devastating tsunami for America’s European allies”, delighting at the decision to exclude Ukraine and Europe from talks between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia on 18 February. The Russian stock market and the rouble have surged since Trump’s call with Putin last week. Putin was evidently pleased with the outcome of the talks in Riyadh, praising the “friendly” atmosphere in remarks on 19 February and declaring that he “would be happy to meet with Donald”. “I believe he feels the same way,” Putin said. “It was evident from the tone of our telephone conversation.”
Of course, as Lawrence Freedman argues in this week’s NS, there is a danger of premature triumphalism. Trump proved capable of walking away from his talks with Kim Jong Un during his last term, despite their extraordinary bromance. Putin may yet overplay his hand, believing himself to be winning on the battlefield in Ukraine and encouraged by Trump’s apparent animosity towards Zelensky. But the early signs are decidedly ominous for Kyiv, and Europe. “We not only listened, but also heard each other,” said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who is still technically subject to US sanctions over his role in the war, after the first round of talks in Riyadh. The US secretary of state Marco Rubio praised the “incredible opportunities” to partner with the Russians, which he insisted would be “good for the world”.
There will now inevitably be a renewed round of innuendo around Trump’s ties with Russia and questions about whether he is, somehow, beholden to Putin. The phrase “Trump is a Russian asset” began trending on X after his attacks on Zelensky on 19 February. But the truth is likely more prosaic – and dispiriting. Trump simply admires Putin and his dictatorial rule.
Perhaps Trump is seeking payback over Zelensky’s unwitting role in his 2019 impeachment – during the president’s first term he was impeached by the US House after delaying military aid to Ukraine as he pressured Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country (Trump was later acquitted by the Senate). But other than eyeing Ukraine’s mineral resources, Trump does not seem to care much what happens to Ukraine. However, he does have form for blithely parroting Russian propaganda, baselessly accusing Ukraine of interfering in the 2016 US election and siding with Putin over his own intelligence agencies about allegations of Russian election interference during their infamous summit in Helsinki in 2018. When Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders on the eve of the invasion in 2022, Trump praised Putin’s tactics as “genius”. (He has also spoken admiringly of China’s leader Xi Jinping as “a king” and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as a “very strong guy” who “runs it tough”.)
Already there are rumours that Trump will travel to Moscow for this year’s Victory Day parade on 9 May to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. During their 12 February call, he noted that the two leaders both “reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II”. Trump appears to share Putin’s belief that it should be left to them, as the leaders of great powers – and great men of history – to carve up new spheres of influence for themselves. Perhaps he imagines standing alongside Putin in Red Square, two strongmen shoulder-to-shoulder as they watch the bombastic military parade.
But the real victory in this case would be Putin’s. It has been 20 years since a US president attended the Victory Day parade – George W Bush was the last leader to do so, before Putin’s wars with Georgia and Ukraine, and before the Russian president had elevated the event to a central pillar of his own domestic propaganda and an emblem of Russia’s renewed military strength. Surely Putin had not allowed himself to imagine, even in his wildest dreams, that an American president would not only legitimise his conquest of Ukraine, but glorify his own autocratic rule at the same time. It is bitterly ironic that Trump, who so clearly lusts after Putin’s strongman status and campaigned on a mantra of “peace through strength”, has demonstrated such weakness in his approach to Russia so far, and seems intent on a policy of peace through abject capitulation instead.
[See also: Will Europe abandon Ukraine?]
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