A Trump-Putin alliance, for all to see - Vladimir Kara-Murza The Washington Post

 A Trump-Putin alliance, for all to see

This is the first U.S. administration in modern times to openly side with dictatorship over democracy.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
The Washington Post, April 2, 2025

        Vladimir Putin once admitted that his favorite part of his job in the KGB was recruiting undercover agents and informants. “It was a colossal experience for me,” he told journalists at a summit in Germany in 2017.
        Since coming to the Kremlin a quarter-century ago, Putin has used this experience to his advantage — including vis-à-vis American presidents. A successful recruiter must be able to win the trust and affection of his interlocutors — however different they may be. To George W. Bush, a devout Christian, Putin told the story of a cross that his mother had given him and that survived a massive fire at his dacha — an act of God, he said. After that meeting, Bush famously declared that he “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” To Barack Obama, who won the presidency on a promise of change, Putin offered an agreeable counterpart in the form of puppet “President” Dmitry Medvedev — who had no real power but gave pleasant speeches about freedom and modernization, and once took an iPhone selfie with Steve Jobs. During his first term, Obama pursued an ill-fated “reset” with the Kremlin.
        The approach to Donald Trump, in Putin’s estimation, was personal flattery and caressing his ego. So, he told visiting White House envoy Steve Witkoff how he had prayed for Trump — “his friend” — after the attempt on his life, and commissioned a painting of Trump that Witkoff duly delivered to the Oval Office, leaving the U.S. president “clearly touched.”
        Not that such gestures were much needed. Already, in his first term, Trump demonstrated a deference to and admiration for Putin that puzzled not only European leaders but also members of his own administration. His meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018 led Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) — the most principled voice in American politics when it came to confronting dictators — to the harsh conclusion that “no prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.”
        But anything Trump did during his first term pales in comparison with what has been happening over the past two months. Since returning to the White House, he has blamed Ukraine for Putin’s full-scale invasion of that country in February 2022; denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator without elections” (a description that would fit Putin perfectly) and treated him to a public showdown in February in the Oval Office; invited Putin to rejoin the Group of Eight, from which Russia was expelled after the 2014 annexation of Crimea; and directed the United States to side with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Equatorial Guinea and other dictatorships in opposing a United Nations resolution condemning Putin’s attack on Ukraine.
        And it wasn’t just words. After his shouting match with Zelensky, Trump paused U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, including intelligence-sharing — leaving the country vulnerable to intensified Russian air and missile strikes and causing hundreds of Ukrainian casualties, including among civilians.
Finally, last week, at the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration promised to “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems” after the Kremlin, in a vague and meaningless statement, “agreed to develop measures for implementing” Trump’s proposed partial ceasefire involving energy infrastructure.
        Trump’s overtures to Putin go well beyond the war in Ukraine. Days after his inauguration, the president ended most programs led by the U.S. Agency for International Development — including all projects aimed at supporting civil society and promoting democracy in authoritarian countries such as Russia. As Pete Marocco, the official tasked with dismantling USAID, stated in a court affidavit, these programs were “terminated for national interest.” I do not remember a time in modern history when an American administration deemed — and publicly said — that supporting democratic movements against dictatorships runs counter to U.S. national interests.
        Last month, Trump moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees international broadcasting in 63 languages and reaches an estimated 420 million people in more than 100 countries. For citizens of authoritarian states such as Russia, where independent media have long been silenced, U.S.-funded news outlets were a vital source of truthful information about their own countries and the world.         And though this is a gift not just to Putin but to dictators all around the world, from Cuban communists to Iranian mullahs, it was Moscow in particular that couldn’t hide its delight.
        “This is an awesome decision by Trump,” said Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian state propaganda network RT. “We couldn’t shut them down, unfortunately, but America did so itself.”
        Soviet apologists such as Putin often claim that the U.S.S.R. was destroyed by covert schemes designed in the West. This is obviously false; political change in any country can only come from within. What is true is that Western solidarity with those struggling for democracy behind the Iron Curtain — be it through radio broadcasts that countered state propaganda or gestures such as President Ronald Reagan’s meeting with dissidents during his visit to Moscow in 1988 — played a crucial role in supporting and strengthening public desire for change.
        Under Trump, dissidents fighting autocracy in Russia and elsewhere must adjust to a new reality in which the United States is not only not helping them in their fight but is actually siding with their oppressors. This makes our struggle more difficult — but it won’t change the outcome. The vacated leadership of the free world will be filled by others. But most important, the impetus for change will once again come from within — because, for all the current setbacks, the future belongs to democracy, not dictatorship. Even if Vladimir Putin — and Donald Trump — like to think otherwise.

What readers are saying
The comments overwhelmingly suggest that many readers believe Donald Trump is ideologically aligned with Vladimir Putin, viewing Trump as a Russian asset or puppet. They argue that Trump's actions, such as undermining American institutions and foreign relations, align with...

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