What is this thing Donald Trump has for Vladimir Putin, this respect for a brutal dictator, this admiration for a war criminal? Why would an American president want to get so chummy with a man like Putin?
On his way to a recent campaign rally, the president said, “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” before adding, “They haven’t been doing much.”
Words matter and in this case the president’s words are detached from reality. Russia has taken deliberate aim at civilians in Ukraine. Putin has targeted apartment buildings in Kyiv, the capital city. He’s aimed his missiles at hospitals and schools. And with winter approaching, he’s targeting what’s left of Ukraine’s electricity grid.
And yet the president tells us that “Russia has been fine on Ukraine”? And “They haven’t been doing much”?
Maybe Mr. Trump thinks he can sweet-talk Putin to encourage him to make a deal to end the war. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Or …maybe Trump’s affection for Putin is affecting his judgment.
For Volodymyr Zelensky, who’s fighting for his country’s very survival, President Trump shows no respect, certainly no admiration. Instead he shows contempt.
“We’ve given a lot to Ukraine.” Trump says. “They’ve given nothing to us.”
So the president has rolled out another red carpet for Putin — this time not literally as he did last summer in Alaska. This time the red carpet comes in the form of help from the president that would fuel Putin’s war machine and inflict more pain on Ukrainian civilians.
As David Sanger of the New York Times reports, “[President Trump] shunted aside a bipartisan law, signed just weeks ago, imposing new tariffs on Russia. He cut a deal to purchase diesel from Moscow. His negotiators agreed on the vague outlines of a deal for much of Lukoil, a battered Russian energy firm. And he called for the replacement of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, whose success in taking the fight inside Russia deeply frustrates him.”
And last week we learned that Russia agreed to talks with Ukraine and the United States next month. But we shouldn’t expect much. The talks — if they even actually happen — would involve low level representatives, and so there’s virtually no chance they would lead to an end to the war.
Putin wants the kind of deal that Russia can live with and Ukraine can’t, the kind of deal he can persuade his “friend” President Trump to go along with and shove down Zelensky’s throat.
And at some point, it could happen — because the president blames Zelensky for keeping the war going, the war Russia started without provocation. He sees Ukraine, not Russia, as the obstacle to peace.
And while he was in Moscow this week, Steve Witkoff, the president’s chief negotiator, offered up a rhetorical kiss on the cheek to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president had just agreed to let a retired American teacher go free after being held for four years in a Russian prison.
“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” Witkoff told Putin. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute you.”
Let’s see if we have this right: Putin arrests an American on phony charges, convicts him in a Russian kangaroo court, keeps him locked up for four years, and when he releases him, he’s called a “humanitarian.” Maybe Putin also deserves a Nobel Prize for his generosity.
And while everyone was smiling and playing nice inside the Kremlin, while Mr. Trump’s man in Moscow was hailing Putin as a humanitarian, Russia was raining missiles on men, women and children inside Ukraine.
And lost in all of this is another reality. It’s not only Ukraine that’s getting hammered. Our president’s “bromance” with Putin is also inflicting damage to America, to American values.
“President Trump and MAGA succeeded in part because they tapped into the sense of loss many Americans were feeling, the fear that the civilization the U.S. had helped create was in peril,” Gerry Baker writes in the Wall Street Journal. “They were elected to restore faith in America after years in which its leaders and culture had trashed American values.”
“America is still the greatest country on earth,” Baker goes on. “But its greatness will atrophy unless it restores its historic sense of purpose and the ideals of its founding principles and finds again leaders willing to place those ideals above the sordid, shameful, soul-defiling lust for power and money.”
Donald Trump likes the company of strong, authoritarian men. That’s how he sees Putin. As far as Trump is concerned, Zelensky is a little obstinate man standing in the way of a deal that would not only end the killing, but also might finally get Mr. Trump the Nobel Peace Prize he believes he deserves.
So let me end where I began: What’s this thing President Trump has for Putin, a man who is following in the footsteps of Josef Stalin? Whatever this thing is, it’s not good for Ukraine — and it’s certainly not good for the United States of America.