Will Trump honor Putin’s victory?

It’s only been a week since Donald Trump won the election, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of the strong leaders Trump admires most, is already scratching his head.

Initially, Putin waited two days before congratulating Trump on his victory. One can imagine Trump receiving calls from curtsy leaders from around the world – Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, the head of NATO, European heads of state – and himself all the time wondering about the man he admired publicly and privately for eight years: When will Vladimir call?

Then, in response to Trump’s claim that he asked during their phone call – in some reports: warned– Putin did not want to escalate the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman denied that the two had even spoken on the phone. (Putin offered belated congratulations at a news conference.)

I don’t know who is telling the truth, a practice for which neither has a great reputation. But either way, if Putin orders 50,000 new recruits (including 10,000 imported North Korean soldiers) in the next few weeks to launch the next rampage – driving Ukrainian soldiers out of the thin slice of Russian territory they hold and then across the border, ground in Donbas province – he can tell a complaining Trump that he doesn’t remember any such conversation. If Trump believes that Putin will actually refrain from increasing attacks on Ukraine as a friendly act of kindness… well, perhaps our future president will learn a lesson about the limits of personal relationships in the face of supposed national interests as he begins his second term.

The latest twist in this saga came on Monday when Russia’s intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev made the following remark in an interview with the Moscow newspaper Kommersant:

The election campaign is over. In order to be successful in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he is obliged to fulfill these.

This is a mind-blowing piece of psychological warfare! The Russians are basically telling Trump: We put you in office. Now it’s time for you to pay us back.

So Trump asked himself: WTF?

It is widely known that toward the end of this year’s presidential campaign, Russians created and distributed fake videos aimed at distracting voters from Vice President Kamala Harris. One such video is said to show illegal Haitian immigrants voting. (The FBI, the Director of National Intelligence and the top cybersecurity agency issued a rare joint statement on the claim, warning that these videos were false and of Russian origin.) Russians also called for bombings at polling stations in black neighborhoods, which tend to favor Democratic candidates.

However, there is no evidence that Trump or his campaign staff participated in or knew anything about these videos or the bomb threats – and no one has claimed they did. Whether Trump was actually involved or whether Russia was involved in some other way Compromat (Compromising material) on Trump, Patrushev’s message represents an extremely serious public blackmail threat against an elected American president.

If Trump had not been involved in this escapade, Patrushev’s move shows – some would say: confirmed– that Russia’s main goal in all of these disinformation efforts is to sow chaos, incite distrust and weaken the foundations of democracy in Western countries, especially in the United States, regardless of who the president is.

What Trump is doing with this campaign — whether he is fully aware of its scope and depth — remains unknown. His foreign policy, which he has often made clear, is aimed at rapprochement with Putin’s Russia. At a news conference for the first time in Helsinki, he said he believed Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies on the question of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election. More broadly, Trump loathes multinational alliances, particularly NATO. He believes that US military aid to Ukraine is a waste of money; He doesn’t particularly like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a “salesman,” and he undoubtedly remains bitter about the role her “beautiful phone call” played in his first impeachment trial. (With this call, Trump tried to stop the delivery of US anti-tank missiles until Zelensky agreed to dig up information about Hunter Biden.)

The entire MAGA wing of the Republican Party—that is, the Republican Party—supports Trump’s desire to renew good relations with Russia the better to deal with America’s true adversary, Xi Jinping’s China. The first picks for Trump’s Cabinet: Rep. Mike Waltz as national security adviser, Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Rep. Elise Stefanik – all share this perspective. Shortly after his victory, Trump explicitly tweeted that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, both of whom had campaigned for leadership positions, had no place in his administration. Haley had committed the unforgivable sin of running against Trump in the primaries, but more than that, both she and Pompeo supported—and still support—increasing military aid to Ukraine. So they were outside.

One can only wonder what Trump will do – whether he will change his position, whether he will be able to change his stance – when he realizes If he realizes that Putin is not his friend. Trump definitely shouldn’t act like he is Is.

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