How Trump plays in the hands of Putin, from Ukraine to reduce American institutions

If President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wrote a list of races of what he wanted from Washington, it would be difficult to beat what was offered to him in the first 100 days of President Trump’s new mandate.

Pressures on Ukraine to abandon the territory to Russia? Check.

The promise to repair sanctions? Check.

The absolution of the invasion of Ukraine? Check.

Indeed, as Mr. Trump met President Volodymyr Zelensky From Ukraine on the sidelines of the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, the vision of the President for Peace appeared in particular unilateral, allowing Russia to keep the regions that it had taken by force in violation of international law while prohibiting Ukraine from joining NATO.

But that’s not all that Mr. Putin came out of Mr. Trump’s return to power. Intensate or not, most of the president’s actions on other fronts are also suitable for Moscow’s interests, including the rifts he opened with the traditional American allies and the changes he has made to the US government itself.

Mr. Trump demolished American institutions that have long aggravated in Moscow, as Voice of America and the national endowment for democracy. He disarmed the nation in his battle of Netherworld against Russia by temporarily interrupting cyberroffensive operations and slowing programs to combat Russian disinformation, elections interference, violations of sanctions and war crimes.

He spared Russia of the prices which he imposes on imports of almost all other countries, arguing that he was already under sanction. However, he has always applied the price on Ukraine, the other party with which he negotiates. And in a reversal of his first mandate, Politico reported that Mr. Trump’s team would have discussed the opportunity to raise sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in Europe, a project he has condemned several times.

“Trump played directly in Putin’s hands,” said Ivo Daalder, Managing Director of Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former NATO ambassador under President Barack Obama. “It is difficult to see how Trump would have acted differently if it was a Russian asset that how he acted in the first 100 days of his second term.”

Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, rejected the idea that Mr. Trump’s actions were to the advantage of Russia. “The president acts only in the interest of the United States,” she said in an interview.

She added that there was no connection between Russia and the cuts to various organizations that were orchestrated by the Elon Musk government’s Ministry of Elorship, or Doge, or similar efforts to store the government.

“DOGE has nothing to do with the efforts of our national security team to end the war,” she said. “These are not conscious decisions that the president takes on to appease Russia. Regarding Russia and Ukraine, he tries to appease the world by putting an end to war and making it resolve Pacific. ”

Trump has long rejected criticism that he is gentle on Russia, even if he expressed his admiration for Mr. Putin. He published a rare reprimand by Mr. Putin this week after a missile strike on Kyiv killed at least a dozen peopledemanding on social networks, “Vladimir, stop!”

Addressing journalists later, Trump denied that he was putting pressure on Ukraine for concessions. “We put a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows it,” he said.

When he was asked what Moscow should abandon in a peace agreement, Trump only said that Russia could not have taken control of Ukraine – something he had not really been able to do militarily in the three years since his large -scale invasion. “Stop the war, stop taking the whole country, a big concession,” he said.

But what has been so striking in Mr. Trump’s return to his duties is how many of his other actions in the last three months have been considered to benefit Russia, directly or indirectly – so much that the Russian officials of Moscow applauded the American president and have publicly celebrated some of his movements.

After having moved to dismantle Voice of America and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, two press organizations financed by the United States which transmitted independent reports to the Soviet Union and later Russia, Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian state broadcaster, RT, called it “an impressive Trump decision”. She added: “We could not close them, unfortunately, but America did it itself.”

These are just some of the American government organizations that Trump and Mr. Musk have targeted the pleasure of Russia. Moscow has long wanted the American Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, which all finance programs for the promotion of democracy that Kremlin considers as part of a regime change campaign, and which are all now confronted with the ax.

The new Secretary of State Marco Rubio Department restructuring plan Similarly, the offices that have aggravated Russia have been targeting over the years, including the Office of Democracy and Human Rights, which would be integrated into a foreign assistance office. Rubio said the office had become a “left-wing platform to make vendettas” against conservative foreign leaders in places such as Poland, Hungary and Brazil.

“The ultimate result is that it will benefit Russia under Putin in the long term,” said Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis. “These types of democracy promotion programs in several administrations that we have considered a means of winning allies and improving the American position in the world.

Samuel Charap, Rand Corporation analyst, said many of the actions Mr. Trump had not necessarily aimed at pleased Moscow. “I am not sure that the Russians have thought of these things as things they would like to put on the table, even in negotiations with the United States,” he said, as the dismantling of the voice of America. “But they are certainly happy to see him disappear.”

At the same time, Charap said that the Peace Plan in Ukraine offered by Trump, even if it is inclined in the direction of Moscow, has not really addressed important points that Russia has insisted on regulation, as prohibiting the presence of foreign military forces in Ukraine.

“This does not affect a lot of problems they have identified as their main priorities in negotiations on the war of Ukraine,” he said, “and the concessions that are made, in some cases, might not have been their main priorities.”

Some targets of the Trump administration cuts have resisted, and it is not clear how many cups will ultimately come into force. A federal judge this week Blocked Mr. Trump The dismantling of the voice of America, pending other disputes. The Trump administration calls on Friday. The national endowment for democracy, aid groups and other institutions are also pursuing.

But there is not such a recourse for other government initiatives. Mr. Rubio at the beginning of the month Stop an office This followed the foreign disinformation of Russia and other adversaries, saying that the Biden administration had tried to “censor the votes of the Americans”.

This week, the White House included in the Press Pool Tim Pool, a right commentator who was paid $ 100,000 for each video he published on a social media site as part of the Ministry of Justice called a Russian influence operation. Mr. Pool said that he did not know that money came from Russia and that he had not been accused of a crime.

Certain positions of the Trump administration abandon the long-standing republican orthodoxy, and even in some cases, the positions held by Mr. Trump’s team herself. The national endowment for democracy was Created under President Ronald Reagan. The position now evacuated on Russian atrocities has been mandated by the co -collistered legislation by representative Michael Waltz, Republican of Florida, who is now the national security advisor to Mr. Trump.

The idea that Russia could keep the territory it has taken within the framework of a balanced peace agreement is largely recognized as inevitable. But Trump goes further by offering official recognition from the United States of Crimean control over Crimea, the peninsula he seized from Ukraine in 2014 in violation of international law, an additional legitimacy stage that has amazed a lot in Ukraine as well as his friends in Washington and Europe.

Such a decision would reverse the policy of the first Trump administration. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s State Department published a Crimea Declaration To affirm his “refusal to recognize the affirmations of sovereignty of the Kremlin in the territory seized by force”, understanding to the American refusal to recognize the Soviet control of the Baltic States for five decades.

In 2022, Mr. Rubio, then a republican senator from Florida, co -sponsored the legislation prohibiting the American recognition of Russian sovereignty over any captured Ukrainian territory. “The United States cannot recognize Putin’s claims, or we may establish a dangerous precedent for other authoritarian regimes, such as the Chinese Communist Party, to imitate”, ” Mr. Rubio said at the time.

On the other hand, Mr. Trump said A new interview with Time Magazine that the United States could indeed recognize Mr. Putin’s complaint. In fact, he went ahead and actually did it without even waiting for an agreement to be sealed.

“Crimea will stay with Russia,” he said in the interview, which was published on Friday. He again blamed Ukraine for Russia’s decision to invade him, saying that “what caused war is when they started talking about NATO”.

The net effect of Mr. Trump’s inclination to Russia and the dismantling of American institutions that have irritated Moscow is to undermine America’s position against a major opponent, argued that David Shimer, a former adviser in Russia by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., last month, noted Mr. Shimer, the Intelligence Community said that Russia “Enduring a potential threat to American power, presence and world interests.”

“The current approach,” said Shimer, “promotes Russia at all levels – by making a concession after a concession on Ukraine, driving up our main soft power tools and weakening our alliance network across Europe, which has historically helped the United States manage the Russian aggression of a position of strength.”