Trump and Putin, episode 101

Is it something you said Canada? Donald Trump has twice made an early exit from a G7 summit, both times hosted by Canada. On each occasion, it was for pretty much the same reason; Trump likes Vladimir Putin and the other six leaders don’t. More specifically, Trump alone believes the group should readmit Russia, which was expelled in 2014 after Putin annexed Crimea. In 2018, the departing Trump complained, “They should let Russia come back in.” Earlier this week he resurfaced the same grievance as if nothing had happened in between. “I would say that was a mistake,” he said of Putin’s exclusion (and by implication Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s invitation), “because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now (my italics).”

Trump’s pretext for bolting was that he needed to make decisions on the Israel-Iran war. But at the time of writing Trump has clarified nothing; he could just as easily have posted his dramatic warnings to Iran — including his demand for its “unconditional surrender” — from the summit in Alberta. From my own conversations, it seems clear the real trigger for Trump’s departure was that he was in a minority of one. Forget G8. They are increasingly the G6. Trump places zero stock on meetings of like-minded democracies. By contrast, he is in his element when rubbing shoulders with other personalist strongmen (see his recent trip to the Gulf). The summit he most craves is between him and Putin.

That Trump believes Putin invaded Ukraine because Russia was kicked out of the G7 is flabbergasting to every other western leader, even ideological cousins such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. To put the most charitable gloss on Trump’s words, he could have been symbolically showcasing the club’s membership rules to cover more general western disrespect of Russia. There may be a smidgen of truth to Russia’s fears of Nato’s eastward expansion. But that hardly explains the fury with which Russia has brutalised the parts of Ukraine that it occupies. Putin has never disguised his yen to restore the Russian empire.

More pertinent is that Canada’s Mark Carney wanted to reach a summit consensus for a new round of Russia sanctions to force Putin to the negotiating table. Again, Trump was uninterested. Indeed, he recently disbanded an administration working group that was set up to find Russian pressure points that would furnish sticks to match all the carrots Trump has been dangling. Many of the working group’s National Security Council staffers were fired by Trump last month. But the real cause of its demise was Trump’s lack of interest in applying any pressure on Putin unless we’re talking about a back massage.

Which brings us back to the most persistent question about Trump since he first ran in 2016. Why is he so solicitous of Putin? I have always been sceptical of the theory that Putin has salacious kompromat on Trump. But Putin nevertheless has some kind of hold on Trump, which is not two-way. Trump’s overt admiration for Putin remains a deep enigma with geopolitical consequences. We will see next week how Trump responds to the same group of western leaders plus 25 others at the Nato summit in The Hague. One of Trump’s first term national security advisers, John Bolton, predicted that Trump would quit Nato in his second term. There are no signs that is about to happen. But I will be watching next week’s gathering with unusual interest. So will Putin. Trump can never disguise what he is feeling.

I am turning this week to Max Seddon, the FT’s excellent Moscow bureau chief. Max, what is your best description of how Putin sees Trump? My hunch is that Trump is Putin’s useful idiot. But that may be too simplistic. Is there a Dr Strangelove side to Trump — an unpredictability — of which Putin is wary? But even as I write that question, I recall that Trump has been very predictable on Russia, which he treats far better than allies.

Recommended reading

• On another subject entirely, my column this week is about the return of the American assassin. “Trump’s message is plain,” I write. “If you commit violence in his cause, he will have your back. That Trump nearly lost his own life to an assassin is apparently immaterial.”

• Do also read my colleague Kim Ghattas’ on-point oped in the FT on why “Netanyahu is good at starting wars, but it’s ending them that matters”. In addition to Netanyahu’s Houdini skills in prolonging his stay in office, the salient point is that Israel has started a war it cannot finish alone.

• Elsewhere, read Elizabeth Saunders in Foreign Affairs on why Trump is an “Imperial president at home, emperor abroad”. Congress has abandoned any last vestige of say in US foreign policy. The world’s superpower has a one-man foreign policy.

• Finally, I was fascinated by this insightful profile of Britain’s prime minister in the New Statesman by its new editor, Tom McTague — “What Keir Starmer can’t say”. It confirmed two suspicions. The first is that Starmer is a genuinely decent human being. The second is that he is an incrementalist without a larger theory of the case — “the manager of the decaying post-Blairite order”, in McTague’s words. Britain today needs a leader with the ambition of a Margaret Thatcher or a Clement Attlee. What we have is James Callaghan. 

Max Seddon replies

Dear Ed, greetings from Berlin. In more normal circumstances I’d be writing you from the St Petersburg economic forum, where Russia has traditionally ferried the great and good of the western business elite to hobnob with Putin. (I like to say being Moscow bureau chief is like being the king of Yugoslavia: my titles and responsibilities are the same, though the role has changed somewhat with the times). But a far more conspicuous absence than mine is that of American CEOs and investors, who have shunned the forum despite Trump’s efforts to rebuild ties to Russia through trade and the Kremlin’s attempts to woo them back.

It’s symptomatic of how the rapprochement Trump claimed to be launching after he called Putin in February (the first acknowledged time they spoke since he took office, though there were likely a call or three we don’t know about) isn’t happening. Trump has all but given up on brokering a peace deal in Ukraine. Despite the several visits Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff made to Russia, Putin hasn’t given any ground. Russia has essentially rejected Trump’s peace plan and told Witkoff not to bother with another trip. 

Clearly, Trump thought his cozy relationship with Putin would be enough to seal a deal. After all, the Russian president was nice enough to wish him a happy birthday on Saturday. But the problem with useful idiots is they have to be useful. And I don’t think Russia has got all it hoped out of Trump. Even as Trump and Putin cosied up in his first term, the US increased sanctions against Russia and weapons supplies to Ukraine. That taught the Kremlin there was only so much a bromance could achieve when the countries’ interests were so clearly at odds. And if Trump’s tendency to side with Moscow over Kyiv has been predictable, his flip-flopping policy on Ukraine is anything but — offering an olive branch to Russia one minute and tough sanctions the next. “We have a six-month window to make a breakthrough,” one prominent Trump-loving Muscovite told me late last year. “Otherwise we’ll fuck everything up just like last time and things will get even worse.”

This time around, the Kremlin has appealed to Trump’s mercantile instincts. Russia and the US have discussed deals on rare earth minerals and reviving the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Witkoff has spoken of “very compelling commercial opportunities” awaiting if a deal can be done. But this is all elementary unless Putin agrees to end his invasion of Ukraine. And faced with the choice between resetting ties with the US and pushing to win the war, he’s opted for the latter.

Putin has been careful to flatter Trump in public. “He’s not just a politician, he’s a businessman. I see a big plus in that — he does the math on everything, and since he’s a rich man, he’s clearly good at it,” Putin said on Wednesday. “He’s done the math on various steps [the US] could take on Russia, what it would cost taxpayers, would the economy get a boost or take a hit […] I’m counting on the [US] to make decisions that will restore US-Russia relations.” But by not taking the very favourable deal Witkoff offered him, Putin showed he’s only really interested if Trump throws Ukraine under the bus for good. It’s a gamble that Russia can press home its advantage and finally win the crushing victory Putin thought his troops would secure three years ago. After all, Trump may not be around four years from now. But Putin almost certainly will — and wants his historical achievement of restoring Russia’s glory, as he sees it, to last much longer.

I’d also argue Putin isn’t the only world leader to learn how to push Trump’s buttons. Is he even the best at it, Ed? Shinzo Abe, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Gulf monarchies all secured tangible results. Putin, meanwhile, for all Trump’s admiration, doesn’t have that much to show for it.