The real collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin has been a mysterious exception. Mr Trump has blamed his travails over Russia's interference in the 2016 election on just about everyone but him. He has blamed the war in Ukraine on former President Joe Biden, for supposedly inviting it through weakness, and on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for somehow starting it. Back when Russia invaded in February 2022, Mr Trump praised Mr Putin's 'savvy'.
For months, as Mr Putin made a mockery of Mr Trump's promises to end the war in a day and of his calls for a ceasefire, the president who once threatened 'fire and fury' against North Korea and tariffs as high as 245% against China indulged in no such bluster. He has sounded less formidable than plaintive. 'Vladimir, STOP!' he wrote on social media in April. His use of the given name betrayed a touching faith that their shared intimacy would matter to his reptilian counterpart, too.
When Mr Putin kept killing Ukrainians, Mr Trump took a step that was even less characteristic: he admitted to the world that he had been played for a fool. 'Maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along,' he mused on April 26th. A month later, he ventured that his friend must have changed, gone 'absolutely CRAZY!' Then on July 8th he acknowledged what should have been obvious from the start: 'He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.' Mr Trump threatened secondary sanctions on Russia but then leapt at Mr Putin's latest mixed messages about peace, rewarding him with a summit in America.
Why, with this man, has Mr Trump been so accommodating? Efforts by journalists, congressional investigators and prosecutors to pinpoint the reason have often proved exercises in self-defeat and sorrow. The pattern seemed sinister: Mr Trump praised Mr Putin on television as far back as 2007; invited him to the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013 and wondered on Twitter if he would be his 'new best friend'; sought his help to build a tower in Moscow from 2013 to 2016; and tried unsuccessfully many times in 2015 to secure a meeting with him. Then came Russia's interference in the election in 2016, including its hack of Democrats' emails to undermine the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. Some journalists fanned suspicions of a conspiracy—'collusion' became the watchword—by spreading claims Mr Putin was blackmailing Mr Trump with an obscene videotape. The source proved to be a rumour compiled in research to help Mrs Clinton.
Nine years later Mr Putin's low-budget meddling still rewards America's foes by poisoning its politics and distracting its leaders. Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, has started a grand-jury investigation into what Mr Trump called treason by Barack Obama and others in his administration. The basis is a misrepresentation of an intelligence finding in the waning days of Mr Obama's presidency. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, has said that because Mr Putin did not hack voting machines, the finding that he tried to help Mr Trump was a lie. The conclusion under Mr Obama was instead that Mr Putin tried to affect the election by influencing public opinion.
The exhaustive report released in 2019 by an independent counsel, Robert Mueller, affirmed on its first page that 'the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.' Mr Mueller indicted numerous Russians, and he also secured guilty pleas from some Trump aides for violating various laws. But he did not conclude the campaign 'conspired or co-ordinated' with the Russians.
To wade through the report's two volumes is to be reminded how malicious the Russians were and how shambolic Mr Trump's campaign was. It is also to lament the time and energy spent, given how little proof was found to support the superheated suspicions. And it is to regret how little Mr Trump was accorded a presumption of innocence. In the final words of the report, Mr Mueller noted that while it did not accuse Mr Trump of a crime, it also did 'not exonerate him'. One might understand his bitterness.
The puzzle of Mr Trump's admiration for Mr Putin may have been better addressed by psychologists. Certainly Mr Putin, the seasoned KGB operative, has known how to play to his vulnerabilities, including vanity. Mr Trump was said to be 'clearly touched' by a kitschy portrait of himself Mr Putin gave him in March.
Putin on the blitz
Yet that patronising speculation may be unfair to Mr Trump, too. It certainly understates the hazard. He has weighty reasons to identify with Mr Putin. Since the 1930s a cornerstone of American foreign policy has been that no country can gain territory by force, a principle also enshrined in the charter of the United Nations. Yet in his first term, in pursuit of his vision of Middle East peace, Mr Trump twice granted American recognition of conquered territory, for Israel's claim to the Golan Heights and Morocco's claim to Western Sahara. He appears to envisage an end to the war in Ukraine that would also award Russia new territory.
This is how 'savvy' people like Mr Trump and Mr Putin believe the world actually works, or ought to: not according to rules confected by stripy-pants diplomats to preserve an international order, but in deference to power exercised by great men. A world hostage to that theory may be the legacy of their true collusion.
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Indian Express
21 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Alaska summit: Putin hoodwinks Trump, yet again
Russian President Vladimir Putin had a broad smile on his face when the two leaders appeared before cameras. And well he might: He bamboozled his American counterpart — as anyone observing their relationship over the past two decades knew he would. Putin scored a victory the moment his feet touched American soil: With a warrant outstanding from the International Criminal Court, he can't travel to 124 of the 193 UN member nations without risking arrest. By inviting him to the US and literally rolling out a red carpet for him, Trump granted Putin a level of legitimacy denied to him by two-thirds of the world. The good news from the summit is that no deal was announced: Any such 'agreement' would simply have been another case of two foreign powers divvying up land over which they had no rightful claim, against the wishes of people who resided there. But lack of such a document is cold comfort for the Ukrainians: Trump had preemptively surrendered to Putin's most important conditions long before reaching Alaska. Barely three weeks into his second term, Trump granted Putin's greatest demand: Denial to Ukraine of the possibility of joining NATO. After the dissolution of the USSR, 14 European nations, which had been under de facto Soviet control, joined the world's most powerful military alliance, and Russia hasn't dared to invade any of them since. Ukraine was never part of NATO — and Putin has explicitly demanded that it never be offered membership. That might have been part of a deal ending the war: Russia might give up all (or at least some) of the Ukrainian territory it has seized, and in return, Ukraine might agree to set aside hopes of joining NATO. But Trump offered that up proactively, without getting anything in return: On February 12, his Secretary of Defence said, 'The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.' One rule of negotiations is to avoid tossing away one's most valuable chip before sitting down at the table. A second key Russian demand was an end to US military aid for Ukraine, and Trump capitulated on that as well. Under President Joe Biden, the US provided more aid to Ukraine than any other nation did: 175 billion dollars' worth, the lion's share of which was military-related. Without this aid, Ukraine might not have been able to withstand the full impact of Putin's assault. In March, Trump cut off military aid cold, then played a back-and-forth game for months. In July, he permitted European nations to buy US armaments (to the financial benefit of American military contractors) and donate the weapons to Ukraine. That's somewhat better than a complete arms embargo — but nowhere near the support necessary to hold Russia off for long. While running for his current term, Trump often vowed that he'd end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. When the Alaska summit began, he'd been in office for nearly 5,000 hours; it ended with him unable to achieve a ceasefire, let alone a permanent end to the conflict. This all must come as a shock to the citizens of India. Just two weeks ago, Trump walloped them with the highest tariff rate of any nation on Earth: 25 per cent across the board, and an additional 25 per cent as punishment for buying oil from Russia. 'They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,' he said, in purported explanation of his action. 'Because of this, I will be substantially raising the tariff paid by India to the USA.' A war machine whose commander he welcomed warmly, and then gave his tacit blessing to carry right on? What, Indians may ask, does Trump even want? If he's trying to stop the war in Ukraine, why doesn't he crack down on the nation that's actually causing it? Why strong-arm a friend and partner like India as a roundabout way to (maybe) put some indirect pressure on Russia, while putting no pressure whatsoever on Russia itself? While India labours under a 50 per cent tariff, the rate imposed on Russia is half that (perhaps even less — it's impossible to tell for sure). What does it all mean? Trump's goal here is simple: He's trying to bully his way into a Nobel Peace Prize. Reportedly, he even called up the Prime Minister of Norway (whose nation administers the award), likely to demand he knuckle under. That isn't how Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr, or Nelson Mandela got their wreaths. 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Time of India
28 minutes ago
- Time of India
For Ukraine, the Alaska summit was a complete disappointment
Vladimir Putin (left) Donald Trump (AP) During Saturday night, many Ukrainians stayed up and anxiously waited for news from the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia's head of state Vladimir Putin. For some, there was hope the talks could lead to some sort of end of Russia's war against Ukraine. Many Ukrainians though feared the price for this might be territorial concessions Kyiv would be pressured into making. But it soon became clear that the summit in Alaska had brought no fundamental changes. No deal, just a photo op "There were no concrete results for Ukraine," Oleksandr Kraiev of the Ukrainian Prism think tank told DW. "Thank God nothing was signed and no radical decisions were made," the North America expert said. "The summit was an extremely successful information operation for Russia. The war criminal Putin came to the US and shook hands with the leader of the free world." 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This was a signal to everyone not to forget who the most important country in the world is," Us told DW. As if to confirm this, Dmitry Medvedev, chairman of Russia's security council, said after the Alaska summit that a "full-fledged mechanism for meetings" between Russia and the US at the highest level had been restored. "Important: The meeting proved that negotiations without preconditions and simultaneously with the continuation of the special military operation are possible. Both sides directly put the responsibility for future negotiation results on Kyiv and Europe," Medvedev wrote on social networks. The term special military operation is how Russia refers to its war against Ukraine. More uncertainty following Alaska summit Ivan Us thinks that the summit did not get Ukraine closer to peace. Instead, it intensified the chaos, as the US and Russia are making contradictory statements about continuing possible trilateral dialogue involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 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Moscow doesn't change its goals There are fears in Ukraine that Zelenskyy's trip to Washington could result in new pressure from the US on Ukraine. "Any 'no' from the Ukrainian side could be portrayed as [a] lack of willingness to end the war. Trump essentially admitted that it's about an 'exchange of territories for security guarantees,' and he confirmed that agreement was reached on certain points and spoke of a 'chance for success,'" Iryna Herashchenko, Ukrainian MP and co-chair of the opposition party "European Solidarity," wrote on social media. She believes that such formulations allow Moscow to present this as legitimization of its demands. "Putin repeated during the brief briefing once again that the actual causes of the conflict must be eliminated. This means that Moscow will not change its goals - because the existence of an independent Ukraine is seen as the actual cause," warns Herashchenko. 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Time of India
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