If Russian President Vladimir V. Putin drafted a shopping list for what he wanted from Washington, it would be difficult to beat what he was offered in the first 100 days of President Trump’s new term.
Pressure to abandon Russia’s territory in Ukraine? check.
Promise to relieve sanctions? check.
Abuse from invasion of Ukraine? check.
In fact, the president’s vision for peace seemed particularly unilateral as Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkov, visited Moscow for further negotiations on Friday.
But it’s not just Putin’s escape from Trump’s return to power. Many of the president’s actions on other fronts, intentionally or not, are also in line with the interests of Moscow, including the traditional American allies and the rifts he has made to the US government itself.
Trump has demolished American institutions that have long exacerbated Moscow, including the American Voice and the National Fund for Democracy. He has disarmed the country in the Netherworld battle with Russia by halting cyberattack operations and suppressing programs to combat Russia’s disinformation, election interference, sanctions violations and war crimes.
He argued that Russia has escaped from tariffs imposed on imports from almost every other country, and that it is already under sanctions. However, he still applied tariffs to Ukraine, another party he was negotiating with. And then he was reversing from his first semester, Politico reported it Trump’s team is reportedly debating whether to lift sanctions on Russia’s NodeStream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, a project he has repeatedly condemned.
“Trump has come to Putin’s hands,” said Ibo Daalder, chief executive of the Chicago Global Affairs Council and former NATO ambassador under President Barack Obama. “If he’s a Russian asset, it’s hard to see Trump do something different than how he did in the first 100 days of his second term.”
White House spokesman Caroline Leavitt rejected the notion that Trump’s actions were in Russia’s interest. “The president is acting only for the benefit of the United States,” she said in an interview.
She added that there is no connection between Russia and Elon Musk’s government efficiency or reductions to various organisations organized through similar efforts to ease the government.
“Doge has nothing to do with the efforts made by the national security team to end the war,” she said. “These are not conscious decisions that the President would try to soothe Russia in any way. As for Russia and Ukraine, he is trying to soothe the world by ending the war and leading it to a peaceful solution.”
Trump has long rejected criticism that he was soft in Russia despite his praise for Putin. He issued Putin’s unusual responsibilities this week after a missile strike against Kiev killed at least dozens and demanded social media. “Vladimir, stop it!”
Speaking to reporters later, Trump denied that he was putting pressure on Ukraine alone for concessions. “We put a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that,” he said.
Asked what Moscow must give up as part of the peace deal, Trump said Russia cannot take over everything Ukraine. “We’ve stopped the war, stopped taking away the whole country, and made quite a big concession,” he said.
But what really struck me about Trump’s appointment is that the number of other actions he has done over the past three months has been seen as directly or indirectly benefiting Russia. So, Russian officials in Moscow cheered on the US president and publicly celebrated some of his moves.
Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian National Broadcasting Station RT, two US-funded news outlets that sent independent reports to the Soviet Union and later Russia after he dismantled the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, called it a “great decision by Trump.” She said, “Unfortunately, we couldn’t close them, but America closed itself.”
These are just a few of the US government organizations where Trump and Musk targeted Russia’s joy. Moscow has long responsibilities with the US Institute of International Development, the National Fund for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, and the National Institute of Democracy. All of this is based on democracy promotion programs that the Kremlin considers to be part of its campaign for change of government, all of which are currently facing x.
Secretary Marco Rubio’s new divisional restructuring plan is similarly targeting offices that have exacerbated Russia over the years, including the Democracy and Human Rights Office, which will be folded into offices for foreign aid. Rubio said the bureau has become a “platform for left-wing activists to pay Vendetta” to conservative foreign leaders in places such as Poland, Hungary and Brazil.
“The ultimate outcome is that this will benefit Russia under Putin in the long term,” said Alina Polikova, chairman of the European Centre for Policy Analysis. “These kinds of democracy promotion programs under multiple administrations that we saw as a way to acquire allies and improve America’s position in the world. We’ve undermined it and Russia is intervening.”
Samuel Charap, an analyst at RAND Corporation, said much of the actions Trump has taken were not necessarily intended to please Moscow. “I don’t know if the Russians thought these things were something they wanted to put on the table, even in negotiations with the US,” he said. “But they’re certainly happy to see it disappear.”
At the same time, Carup said that Trump’s Ukrainian peace plan offered, despite leaning towards Moscow’s direction, has not actually addressed the key points Russia insisted on inclusion in the settlement, as it excludes the presence of Ukrainian foreign troops.
“We don’t touch on many of the issues they identified as their top priorities in negotiations on the Ukrainian War,” he said.
Some of the Trump administration’s targets for cuts are resisting, and it is not clear how many cuts will ultimately be enacted. This week a federal judge stopped Trump from dismantling America’s voice and was waiting for further lawsuits. The Trump administration will sues on Friday. It also appeals to national funds for democracy, aid groups and other institutions.
However, there is no such reliance on other government initiatives. Earlier this month, Rubio closed an office that tracked foreign misinformation from Russia and other enemies, claiming that the Biden administration “stricken the American voices.”
Just this week, the White House was included in Pools Pool Timpool, a right-wing commentator who paid $100,000 for each video he posted to a social media site as part of what the Justice Department called a Russian impact operation. Poole says he didn’t know that money came from Russia and he has not been charged with the crime.
Some of the Trump administration’s positions have abandoned long-standing Republican orthodoxy, and, in some cases, abandoned the stances held by Trump’s team itself. That’s what the democratic national fund was Created under President Ronald Reagan. The current potential status in Russia’s atrocities was mandated by law co-hosted by Florida Republican Representative Michael Waltz. He is currently Trump’s national security adviser.
The notion that Russia will maintain the territory it took as part of a balanced peace agreement is widely recognized as inevitable. However, Trump has further taken on the official recognition of Russia’s control of Crimea to the United States. This is a peninsula seized from Ukraine in 2014 for violating international law, and is an additional step of legitimacy that surprised many of Ukraine and friends in Washington and Europe.
Such a move would reverse the policies of the first Trump administration. Trump’s State Department in 2018 Crimean Declaration has been issued He declares that he “refused to acknowledge the Kremlin’s claim of sovereignty over territory seized by force,” and compares it to the United States to recognize the Soviet rule of the Baltic states for 50 years.
In 2022, Rubio, a Republican Senator in Florida, co-hosted joint sovereignty, except for the US recognition of Russian sovereignty over captured Ukrainian territory. “The United States cannot recognize Putin’s claims, or risk establishing a dangerous precedent for other authoritarian regimes like the Chinese Communist Party.” Rubio said at the time..
In contrast, Trump revealed New Interview with Time Magazine That the US can actually recognize Putin’s claims. In fact, he went ahead and did so virtually without waiting for the deal to be sealed.
“Crimea will remain in Russia,” he said in an interview released Friday. He once again denounced the decision to invade Ukraine by Russia, saying, “The war began when they began talking about joining NATO.”
The net impact of Trump’s leaning towards Russia and the dismantling of the US institutions that irritated Moscow was the result of David Simmer, a former Russian adviser to President Joseph R. Biden Jr., last month, to acquire US status, Simmer said Russia declared “threatening the US’s existence and global interest.”
“The current approach,” Simmer said, “I have full support for Russia – making concessions after concessions in Ukraine, dismantling major soft power tools and undermining alliance networks across Europe.
