Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade.
It started properly in 2015, when the foreplay between the two ‘strongmen’ was conducted, like so many great flirtations, at a coy distance. Trump told CBS network he and Putin would ‘probably get along… very well,’ while Putin, to show willing, responded that Trump was ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.’ Trump, eyelids-a- flutter, schmoozed back that it was a ‘great honour’ to receive a compliment from a man who ‘highly respected within his own country and beyond.’
Challenged at another moment on the tendency of Putin’s opponents to meet grisly ends, Trump shrugged it off: ‘He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country…’ To his critics – the late John McCain who sneered (with grim prescience) that the two men were ‘a match made in heaven,’ or presidential hopeful John Kasich who jokingly announced that Putin was now Trump’s ‘running mate’ – Trump responded (in a moment straight out of Mean Girls) that they were ‘jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning’ them. A slightly different picture emerges in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, a portrait of Trump’s first year in the White House. Trump, the late Roger Ailes is quoted as saying, ‘would jump through hoops’ for Putin. ‘I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.’
Nor did Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine dampen Donald’s ardour. ‘He’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,’ Trump said in 2022, adding admiringly that Ukraine was ‘a really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people,’ and that Putin was ‘just walking right in.’ The choice of words seemed to shine more light on the US president’s world view – or complete debasement of it – than any documentary ever could. Canada and Greenland, it seems, had better watch their backs.
A high degree of murkiness has always surrounded Trump’s relationship with the Russian premier. Though there were rumours back in 2016, in the Steele Dossier on alleged Russian meddling in the US elections, that the Kremlin had compromat on Trump (there was talk of filmed hotel-sessions with prostitutes in which ‘golden showers’ featured steamily), these remain unproven. More certain was the revelation, in November that same year, that Trump had leaked classified info – supplied by Israeli intelligence – directly to the Kremlin. It was a move slammed by his critics as ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’ and ‘very, very troubling’, and by Israel as ‘our worst fears confirmed.’
Just as sinister has been POTUS’s furious wish to keep his dealings with Putin behind closed doors. At the Helsinki conference in 2018 – their first official meeting – Trump reportedly insisted that no one be present in the room except himself, Putin and an interpreter, causing consternation among his staff. Two hours the men spent together – long enough for any first date – but aides were shocked to see Trump’s face on his emergence. He looked, aide Steve Bannon was reported as saying, like a ‘beaten dog.’ Biographer Michael Wolff agreed, describing Trump’s appearance, standing beside the Russian premier at the press conference, as ‘deferential, obsequious, servile. It really did seem like Manchurian Candidate stuff, with Trump under the thumb of his handler.’
The servility went on. In his post-conference speech, the president seemed to set Putin’s word above that of his own intelligence services. Referring to state reports of Russian meddling in US Elections, Trump dismissed the idea: ‘President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.’
Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not dampen Donald’s ardour
Trump later rowed back, claiming it was a double negative and that by ‘would’ he meant ‘wouldn’t’, but no one was mollified. Criticism flooded in from all quarters, as did reports from Russia – despite the president’s refusal to tell even his closest advisers what happened in the meeting – that he had made numerous concessions to the Kremlin in those two hours.
‘No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,’ said John McCain. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer added that Mr Trump’s actions had ‘strengthened our adversaries while weakening our defences and those of our allies.’ Such moments, viewed in retrospect, seem to give the lie to Trump’s oft-repeated claim that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine would never have happened on his watch. That it would have happened very differently, no one can doubt.
No less disconcerting were reports in Bob Woodward’s 2024 book War that Trump had spoken to Putin at least seven times since losing office in 2020. Perhaps there was nothing strange about it – Trump claimed to golfer John Daly in 2022 that Putin ‘was a friend of mine… I got along great with him’. But why did he allegedly insist on everyone else leaving the room when he did so? It gave a sense of secret agreements being cooked up, of the ‘You do this and I’ll then say that, and then people will think…’ variety. Putin’s two-day pause before congratulating Trump on his election this time round was seized on by the press as evidence of Russia’s contempt for the Donald; yet it might just as easily have been something mutually agreed, to throw pundits off the scent before Trump’s capitulation to Putin a fortnight ago at Munich. Little, you feel, happens spontaneously or by accident between these two men.
Regarding that relationship, you don’t need to hunt for conspiracies (whether they exist or not) to understand it. Putin’s guile, his longevity, the grand style (his fabled Black Sea ‘Palace’ that makes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago look like a trailer park), his fixing of the constitution to allow him to serve out more than the allotted two terms: all these things are likely to appeal to Trump’s view of the world and how power should handle itself. While other, tamer leaders tiptoe mousily round international laws and treaties, Putin simply grabs what he wants and gets away with it. There is, for Putin, no hostile press to deal with, no Mueller investigation to dog his footsteps, and little but prison or death for those who offend him. ‘Real power,’ Trump once remarked, ‘is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.’
Both leaders, armed with a supernatural lack of shame, are notoriously lucky, able to spring traps that would finish more sensitive or conscience-stricken men. Trump appears to long for friendship but is apt to despise those who offer it – ‘If you seem to respect him,’ Bannon is reported as saying, ‘He thinks he’s put something over on you – therefore you’re a fool.’
Putin, richer, more successful, a more adept player in the political game of amorality and survival, is – Trump surely feels – one of the few people at this stage in his life from whom he can take lessons or at whose feet he can cavort and simper.
But Trump might be in for a rude awakening. He may believe, in some feverish part of himself, that Putin is the only man genuinely his equal, but it’s unlikely the feeling is mutual. Where Trump flatters himself he sees Russian respect and approbation, the KGB-trained Russian Premier, assessing him more coldly, surely perceives a useful idiot of the highest rank, a man cunning but crude and with fatal lacunae – whose ego, vanity and yearning to belong can be played like a balalaika.
‘We both reflected on Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War 2,’ Trump gushed after his infamous phonecall with Putin two weeks ago. But does the president pause to reflect on the 45 years of fear, alienation and hostility that followed?
Trump may feel himself at this moment a Master of the Universe calling out to other Masters of the Universe, a superhero starring in his very own episode of Avengers Assemble. But reality, when the projector glitches and the film begins to combust, may turn out far closer to the 2015 words of Russian expert Leon Aron:
‘Why wouldn’t Putin like him? Here’s a man who knows nothing about Russian history, Putin’s trajectory, Putin’s domestic politics, what happened since 2000 Russia when Putin took over and who presumably concentrates only on what he reads in the headlines. That would be a wonderful U.S. president for Russia to have.’
Trump’s knowledge of Vladimir Putin is surely a little deeper these days, but a mere month into his premiership – tragically for the Ukrainians, worryingly for the rest of us – who can say Leon Aron got it wrong?
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