President Donald Trump’s decision to halt American military aid to Ukraine is one of the most dramatic US foreign policy shifts of recent years. The US has not only effectively changed sides in an ongoing war, it has also seemingly cast aside decades of alignment with Europe against Russian aggression, effectively taking Russia’s side in the larger geopolitical struggle.
For some, Trump’s move will come as no surprise. From the time he defended Russia’s human rights record by pointing out that the US isn’t “so innocent” to the time he took Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word over his own intelligence agencies, his rhetoric has given more than enough ammunition over the years to opponents who portray him as the Russian leader’s “puppet,” as Hillary Clinton once famously described him.
But despite Russia’s much-investigated interference on his behalf in the 2016 election, and despite his frequent expressions of affection for Putin, Trump’s actual policies during his first term in office were not particularly “pro-Russian.” After Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, there were literal champagne toasts on the floor of Russia’s parliament to celebrate what was expected to be a new golden age of US-Russia relations. But the good feelings were short-lived.
Despite what some Trump officials may have promised the Kremlin, Trump did not lift any significant sanctions on Russia and in fact applied dozens of new ones.
The Trump administration signed off on the sale of Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukraine 2019, after the Obama administration had declined. The effectiveness of these weapons against Russia’s armored vehicles following the full-scale invasion in 2022 gave them near-mythical status in Ukraine. Trump’s more hawkish senior officials and members of Congress were often able to get their way on Russia policy, despite the president’s own preferences.
By the time of the 2020 election, the consensus in Moscow was that Trump hadn’t made much of a difference and that relations would continue to be bad, no matter who was in the White House. This time around, Russian leaders reacted a lot more cautiously to Trump’s reelection, with the foreign ministry saying that a bipartisan anti-Russia consensus predominated in Washington and they didn’t expect the new president to change that.
That, however, was before the events of the past few weeks, which have seen the US restarting direct high-level talks with Russia (effectively ending the diplomatic cold shoulder the country has received from the West since 2022); Trump repeating the Kremlin talking points that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that started the war and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is an unelected “dictator”; and then the televised humiliation of Zelenskyy by Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office Friday, including chiding the Ukrainian leader for his “hatred” of Putin.
In addition to halting military aid to Ukraine, the White House has reportedly also asked the State Department and Treasury Department to draw up lists of sanctions against Russian entities and individuals — including oligarchs — that could be lifted in the coming days. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has gone as far as to instruct the US Cyber Command to halt all planning against Russia, including offensive cyber operations.
In short, the “pro-Russia” Trump foreign policy that many in both countries expected, but which never materialized, during the first term, is now here. Less clear, however, is what Russia itself will make of this turn of events.
There’s no reason to delve into conspiracies or “game theory” to explain Trump’s actions. Trump likely genuinely believes support for Ukraine is a bad investment for the US and that the foreign policy establishment’s paeans to the importance of alliances and NATO has allowed other countries to get a free ride on America’s military might.
It’s also probably true, as analyst and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer writes, that for this president, the personal is often political: “Trump gets along with Putin personally, while Trump believes (correctly) that most European leaders neither like nor respect him.”
Still: “It’s really unthinkable that the leader of the United States would act this way,” said Sasha de Vogel, a political scientist and Russia specialist at the University of North Carolina. “It’s incredibly bizarre to see the leader of the United States celebrating Putin and making decisions that play directly into the hands of Russia, which is not our ally, and which considers us their enemy. I would expect to see Russia trying to take every advantage that they can.”
Supporters of Trump’s foreign policy sometimes disagree on whether a new detente with Russia should be part of an overall retrenchment of US military power, or a shift toward addressing what they see as the more serious threat from China, perhaps even peeling Moscow away from its alliance with Beijing in a kind of reverse Nixon maneuver.
Either way, there’s little to hold Trump back from embracing Putin exactly as much as he wants this time around.
Since Trump’s first term, pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian sentiment has become widespread among Trump’s base — even if it’s still the minority position in the country at large.
Unlike the first time, his administration is stocked with officials who either share his views on Russia (like Vance) or, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, have views that are evolving to match the president’s.
In the wake of Zelenskyy’s dressing down, some of the Congressional GOP’s staunchest Russia hawks have either fully backed the president or gone quiet.
After Trump’s election, some Ukrainians, and some Europeans, pointed to Trump’s first term record as evidence he wouldn’t fully reverse course on US support for Ukraine, and might even do away from some of the cautious approaches to military aid they sometimes found frustrating from the Biden administration. In fairness, some of Trump’s own statements gave reason to believe this.
Now, however, leaders on the continent appear to be coming to the conclusion that the 80-year-old alliance between the US and Europe to face down first Soviet, now Russian encroachment can no longer be taken for granted. During his first term, Trump threatened to pull the United States out of NATO entirely. It seems entirely possible he might make good on that threat this time.
Even as leaders like Britain’s Keir Starmer insist the US is “not an unreliable ally,” it’s clear that any Western head of state could probably get the same treatment Zelenskyy received at the White House and that it will be up to Europe to keep Ukraine in the fight going forward.
But the country that may have the trickiest time figuring out how to react to America’s pro-Russia tilt is Russia itself.
Will Russia take the win?
For the moment, Russian leaders seem almost taken aback by their change in fortune in Washington.
“If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” former President and current social media troll-in-chief Dmitry Medvedev tweeted following Trump’s description of Zelenskyy as a “dictator.” Following the Oval Office meeting, Medvedev followed up, “For the first time, Trump spoke the truth to the cocaine clown’s face. The insolent pig has finally received a solid slap in the face.”
In slightly more sober language, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told state television, “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.”
A poll released on Friday by Russia’s Levada Center shows that public support for the war now stands at 80 percent, the highest level since March 2022. (Opinion polling in an authoritarian country should be taken with a grain of salt, but there is at least an observable trend line.)
“This is incredibly good news for Putin,” said de Vogel. While showing no signs of interest in halting the war, the Russian president was at least facing some headwinds due to high casualties, recruiting difficulties, and an overheating economy. This could make him less, rather than more, likely to engage in serious negotiations with the US, Europe, or anyone else, to actually end the war. “There’s no reason for Putin to rush into negotiations for a ceasefire if he can continue to push his advantage now.”
While Russia can be expected to take full advantage of the current moment, experts say it’s less likely they will see this moment as a full-fledged geopolitical realignment.
“They are extremely suspicious” of the US, Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist and security analyst based in the UK, told Vox. “To be honest, they do not believe in a long, lasting peace or in new arrangements for European security. Tactically, they’ll take what they can, but they believe they are in a centuries-long struggle with the West, and Trump’s not going to change that.”
In a recent column, Fyodor Lukyanov, arguably Russia’s leading government-aligned foreign policy intellectual, compared the current moment to Yalta Conference, exactly 80 years ago, when the allies met to devise a new security order for Europe, laying the groundwork for what became the Iron Curtain.
Could Trump and Putin follow in Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin’s footsteps? Hardly, writes Lukyanov. “Trump’s approach to deal-making prioritizes monetary gain and situational advantage over comprehensive, long-term solutions. His understanding of agreements is transactional, lacking the vision required for a treaty on the scale of Yalta.”
Additionally, he writes, “the concept of a ‘world order,’ as understood in Western terms, is losing relevance,” and future agreements are more likely to be limited, short-term, and transactional.
Besides, Russian leaders may feel they’ve seen this movie before. There’s something of a tradition of American presidents coming into office hoping for better relations with Putin. In 2001, President George W. Bush met the newly minted (and still fairly unknown) Russian leader, claiming to have looked into his eyes and gotten a “sense of his soul,” finding him trustworthy.
Barack Obama had the famous “reset” — complete with props — an attempt to find areas of common interest and cooperation. Trump, of course, had his own frustrated attempts to find common ground with Putin in his first term. Joe Biden bucked the trend, by calling Putin a “killer” in the early weeks of his presidency, though even he was able to negotiate a key arms control agreement with Putin before relations collapsed over Ukraine.
This second Trump administration’s pro-Russia tilt is far more dramatic than any of these overtures, but also seems less thought-out. Trump’s initially fairly cautious approach to Ukraine seemed to transform overnight after one call with Putin.
As for Putin, he may need to see more before he believes it.
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