Is Putin taking Trump for a ride?

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what?

Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump’s proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine. 

The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan. Trump, as the columnist Christoph von Marschall observes in the Berlin Tagesspiegel, does not. Instead, he is being successfully manipulated by Putin. The dangerous bromance is back.

Trump’s fondness for Putin and antipathy toward Ukraine is longstanding. Trump was vexed by Ukraine during his first presidency, and he continues to be in his second. He became enraged by Zelensky during his first term, when he asked the Ukrainian for a favor that had a disfavorable outcome, namely impeachment proceedings. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Trump hailed Putin as a genius and dumped on Zelensky. In his second term, Trump has continued to badger Zelensky and laud Putin, only to exhibit tepid signs of irritation with Putin after he balked at the US’s peace efforts and upped his heinous bombings of Ukrainian cities, launching a very real version of fire and fury. Suddenly Trump, who was warned by Melania that Putin was making a patsy of him, observed that maybe he was being “tapped along.”

After proclaiming that he could end the war in a mere 24 hours, Trump wants to deliver the appearance, if not the substance, of an end to the conflict. Putin has shrewdly refrained from attacking Trump personally or condemning the president’s secondary sanctions on Russia. Putin’s track record in beguiling Trump, who appears to admire the Russian dictator, is a good one. In Helsinki, in July 2018, Trump publicly vouched for Putin’s bona fides, saying that he was sure the Russian had not interfered in the presidential election.

Putin’s aspiration is one that the elite around him has long shared – to be treated as co-equal superpower with America, much as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, when each side had its sphere of influence and Moscow was free to carve up Central and Eastern Europe. For Trump, who views NATO as more of an encumbrance than an asset, the chance to cut a deal with Putin is an alluring one. But he also cannot completely ignore hawks inside his administration, such as General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, as well as a contingent of Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, who view Putin with alarm. Hence Trump’s Ukraine tergiversations over the past several months.

For now, Trump is breathing optimism about his upcoming meeting, proclaiming in his press conference yesterday that there is a “very good chance that we could be ending…the end of that road.” Zelensky, by contrast, is sounding a more sober note: “The key is to ensure they don’t deceive anyone in the details – neither us nor the United States.” Here’s hoping.