Trump’s Two-Week Capitulation to Putin
The president gave the Russian dictator the best run of good news he’s had in years.
IF IT WEREN’T OBVIOUS ALREADY, the past two weeks have once again demonstrated that Donald Trump dislikes, if not detests, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while he admires and wishes to befriend Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s animus toward Zelensky dates to his first term and the extortionate “perfect” 2019 phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment. Explaining Trump’s unseemly infatuation with Putin is more challenging. But the outcome is all too clear: While pretending—not very convincingly—to negotiate with Putin, Trump is surrendering to America’s adversaries to the expense of its friends, all to the profound detriment of American national security.
FEW PERIODS IN THE HISTORY of U.S. foreign policy have witnessed such a dramatic flip-flop as the past two weeks. Three years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most Americans think the United States is doing the right amount or not enough to help Ukraine. Not even a majority of Republicans believe U.S. aid is too much.
Trump takes a very different view.
On February 12, Trump began his effort to broker a solution to the Russia-Ukraine war by saying that Ukraine could not expect to recover all its territory or join NATO. His opening negotiating tactic was to concede the Kremlin’s positions on territory and security guarantees for Kyiv, the two primary factors by which a settlement will be judged.
Instead of first calling Zelensky to discuss possible settlement terms or key European leaders whom he expects to provide troops to implement an agreement, Trump phoned Putin. He did so without taking steps to build leverage, such as tightening sanctions, asking Congress for more money for Ukraine, or pressing the G7 to seize frozen Russian Central Bank assets and transfer them to a fund for Kyiv. (What Kyiv got was a neocolonial demand to sign over rights to half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.)
Following a “lengthy and highly productive phone call,” Trump announced he had agreed to meet Putin, breaking ranks with Western leaders, who for three years have isolated the accused war criminal. The next day, Trump broke with other G7 leaders to say Russia, booted from the G8 in 2014 following Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea, should be allowed back in.
Russian TV pundits sang Trump’s praises. What did the United States get in return? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Given Trump’s eagerness to engage, Putin sat back in the expectation of further concessions—and Trump did not disappoint.
On February 18, Trump suggested that Ukraine had started the war with Russia. The following day, he called Zelensky a dictator. The day after that, Western officials reported that the United States opposed citing “Russian aggression” in a G7 statement. Trump repeatedly criticized Zelensky for not making a deal to end the war, when Putin insists he will negotiate only on terms that amount to Ukraine’s capitulation.
On February 21, U.S. diplomats in New York offered a weak draft U.N. General Assembly resolution on the Russia-Ukraine war, not referring to Russia’s aggression, as a counter to a more forceful draft submitted by the European Union and Ukraine. The same day, Trump said it was not very important for Zelensky to be at the negotiating table where decisions crucial to Ukraine’s fate might be made. On February 23, a reporter asked Steve Witkoff, a Trump envoy, to name a concession from Russia. He stared blankly at the camera, unable to name a single concession the administration had asked for, let alone received.
On February 24, the United States joined Russia, Iran, and North Korea at the United Nations in voting against a resolution on a just and lasting peace because the resolution condemned Russian aggression.
Rarely have two weeks brought the Kremlin such good fortune.
TRUMP IS NO FAN OF THE UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT—or, for that matter, Ukraine. Even before Trump’s July 25, 2019 phone conversation with Zelensky, in which he attempted to extort political dirt on an electoral opponent in exchange for congressionally mandated military aid, Trump already trafficked in bizarre conspiracy theories, such as that Ukraine had been behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee as part of a false flag operation and maybe also “had” Hillary Clinton’s missing email server.
But the impeachment was the clincher for Trump’s resentment of Ukraine. It’s worth noting that, in his “perfect” call, Trump did not ask Zelensky to buy American natural gas or negotiate an agreement on developing Ukraine’s minerals. He did not do a single item of U.S. government business.
What Trump instead asked was that Zelensky investigate Hunter Biden, the then-Vice President Biden’s son. Hunter should not have joined a board in Ukraine, given his father’s position. But there is no evidence to suggest the then–vice president did anything to benefit the company on whose board Hunter sat. Trump’s ask was for his own personal benefit, not America’s.
According to John Bolton, a former Trump national security advisor, Trump holds Zelensky responsible for his impeachment. And Zelensky now stands in the way of Trump’s desire to make nice with Putin.
COMPARED TO TRUMP’S DISTASTE for Zelensky, his admiration for Putin is more difficult to explain, save for the pattern that Trump admires ruthlessness and Putin is a genuine dictator. He fully controls political life in Russia, and his political opponents end up in prison or dead. But one is hard-pressed to find an instance in the past ten years when Trump criticized Putin or his actions.
More typical of Trump were his praise for Putin as “very savvy” and for making a “genius” move by recognizing two Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine as independent “people’s republics” on the eve of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Following a meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, Trump famously sided with Putin over the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community. Indeed, his history of praise for Putin antedates his first term in the White House.
Trump has shown notable haste in seeking to engage the Russian president. On February 22, Russian officials said preparations for a summit were underway. At least Trump said he would not attend the May 9 Victory Day celebration in Moscow; that will avert (at least for a year) an awkward scene of Trump and Putin together on Red Square viewing parading Russian soldiers, likely including units that had fought in Ukraine and perhaps committed war crimes there.
Why this devotion to the Russian autocrat? Dark explanations involving the Russians having kompromat (compromising material) on Trump, or even that the Soviet KGB recruited Trump decades ago, try to prove too much based on too little evidence. Sympathy doesn’t necessarily imply coercion. But in any case, America faces a difficult time.
Another theory holds that the Trump administration seeks to throw Ukraine (and perhaps Europe) under the bus to cultivate Putin in an attempt split Russia off from China, which many in the administration view as America’s primary geopolitical challenger. Trump negotiator Keith Kellogg told the Munich Security Conference that the administration sought to “break” Russia’s relations with China (and with Iran and North Korea).
If so, Trump grossly misunderstands the Putin-Xi relationship and China’s importance to Russia. The two declared a partnership with “no limits” three years ago. By one count, they have met more than forty times. Putin will not jettison that relationship to bet on a mercurial Trump or on any American, so deep an unshakable is his distrust of the United States.
The likeliest result of a U.S. attempt to pry Russia away from China would be the needless sacrifice of Ukraine and Europe, which would leave America less able to contain China. To the extent European allies have to cope with Russia on their own, would they show readiness to support Washington’s effort against China? Trump would have scored an own goal, leaving America weakened against both China and Russia.
Trump has suggested a joint summit with Putin and Xi. One commentator noted his musings about Greenland and Canada and suggested the three leaders—each with expansionist ambitions—might come together in a twenty-first century Yalta meeting to divvy up the world into spheres of influence. Russia would have Central Asia and Eastern Europe (plus perhaps Central Europe and, who knows, maybe more), China would receive Taiwan and dominance over East Asia along with it, and the United States would dominate in North America, though Trump realistically would get neither Greenland nor Canada. After such a Yalta 2.0, a neo-imperialist America, no longer looked to for its ideals, would find itself with few allies and friends. That would produce a grim situation, as China and Russia collaboratively would take advantage of the might-makes-right world that Trump had helped to create.
WHATEVER THE EXPLANATION FOR TRUMP’S desire to embrace Putin, it bodes ill for U.S. interests. Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard to cabinet-level positions provoked deep concern, but his choice of Mike Waltz as national security advisor and Marco Rubio as secretary of state seemed reassuring. They had significant foreign policy expertise from their time on Capitol Hill. The Senate confirmed Rubio by a vote of 99 to 0.
Unfortunately, Rubio’s and Waltz’s expertise has been little in evidence. They are either failing to offer Trump wise counsel on dealing with Ukraine, Russia, and Europe (not to mention the national security agencies that allow us to compete against Russia and China), or their advice is being ignored or rejected. Meanwhile, GOP defense hawks and the dwindling number of traditional Republicans on Capitol Hill have been mostly silent.
The sad result is a U.S. foreign policy course that most likely will leave a stain on America’s reputation and yield little of value to the United States.
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