In early 2017, American intelligence businesses delivered an unequivocal judgment about why President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a sprawling effort to sabotage the latest American presidential election.
Mr. Putin wished to cripple the religion Individuals have in their very own elections, they discovered, and to undermine a United States-led “liberal world order” that the Russians see as a risk to their safety. As a approach to obtain this aim, the evaluation discovered, Russia labored to assist Donald J. Trump win the election.
Eight years later, Mr. Trump sat within the Oval Workplace for a blustery assembly with President Voldymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and rendered, as soon as once more, his personal judgment on that interval. There was no Russian sabotage, only a “phony witch hunt” of which each he and Mr. Putin have been victims.
“Let me inform you, Putin went by a hell of quite a bit with me,” he stated.
The assertion was a inform. The president sees widespread trigger with Mr. Putin, a merging of pursuits solid by battles towards these he believes are his and Mr. Putin’s mutual adversaries — together with Democratic lawmakers, European leaders and a spectral “deep state” contained in the U.S. authorities.
The connection between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin has for years been scrutinized by American authorities inquiries, assessments by international intelligence providers and information media investigations. Taken collectively, they’ve unearthed proof to help an array of theories addressing Mr. Trump’s affinity for a Russian strongman who has spent a profession attempting to undermine American pursuits.
As but, there isn’t any single, tidy rationalization. However based mostly solely on Mr. Trump’s public actions throughout his first six weeks again in workplace, the straightforward reality is that he has made few selections on nationwide safety or international coverage that haven’t been cheered by the Kremlin, making his stance towards Mr. Putin extra consequential than ever.
This can be a world turned the wrong way up for Susan Miller, the previous head of counterintelligence on the C.I.A., who led the company’s 2017 intelligence evaluation on Russian election interference.
Ms. Miller stated in an interview that she thinks Mr. Trump’s affinity for the Russian president boils right down to “autocrat envy”— that he covets the ability Mr. Putin has to make selections in Russia with none constraints.
“Trump likes Putin as a result of Putin has management over his nation,” she stated. “And Trump desires management over his nation.”
Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Zelensky of starting the conflict that began with a Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a conflict that has seen the mass slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. He has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine that the nation desperately must battle Russian forces.
He has gutted American international support applications that Mr. Putin has lengthy detested, together with pro-democracy applications in international locations like Hungary that Russia is bringing nearer into its sphere of affect. He has sidelined European allies, saying they’re untrustworthy and suggesting they could need to fend for themselves sooner or later.
Mr. Trump has defended his actions partially by saying they’re needed steps to getting Russia to the negotiating desk, casting himself as a peace dealer to finish the conflict in Ukraine. Up to now, nevertheless, he has pushed far tougher on Mr. Zelensky to make concessions than he has on Mr. Putin.
On Friday, he started the day with a social media submit threatening financial sanctions towards Russia for what he stated was the “pounding” the Russian navy was delivering in Ukraine. Within the Oval Workplace hours later, nevertheless, he appeared to defend Mr. Putin, saying that Russia “bombing the hell out of Ukraine” was really an indication that Russia wished an finish to the conflict. He criticized Ukraine for not, in his view, being as motivated to finish the battle.
“What’s Putin getting? He’s getting greater than he and different former Okay.G.B. officers ever dreamed of,” stated Calder Walton of Harvard’s Kennedy College of Authorities, who wrote a e book on the historical past of espionage between Russia and the US.
“That is the dismantling earlier than our eyes of the U.S.-led worldwide order, one thing that Putin has labored towards his whole profession,” he stated.
How a lot does all this please Russian officers? Simply ask them.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s longtime spokesman, went on state tv two days after the Oval Workplace blowup with Mr. Zelensky and praised the Trump administration’s decisions since coming to energy. The brand new White Home agenda, he stated, “largely aligns with our imaginative and prescient.”
That very same day, Sergey V. Lavrov, Mr. Putin’s international minister, offered Russians with a wholly different take on world history than the one which Kremlin officers have taught for many years. Mr. Lavrov stated it was European nations, not the US, that have been answerable for so a lot of historical past’s nice tragedies — citing the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars, World Warfare I and the rise of Hitler.
“If we have a look at historical past looking back,” he stated, “the Individuals didn’t play any instigating, not to mention incendiary, function.”
Ms. Miller stated there was little doubt amongst members of her counterintelligence staff about Russia’s intentions in disrupting the 2016 election: to unfold disinformation and sow chaos with the intention of undermining confidence within the democratic course of.
On the identical time, she stated, her company staff — which was joined by officers from the Nationwide Safety Company and the F.B.I. — was extraordinarily cautious and fiercely nonpartisan in assessing what impression the Russian interference had on Mr. Trump’s election victory.
However, through the first Trump administration she discovered herself within the cross hairs of the staff of prosecutors led by John Durham, whom Legal professional Common William P. Barr had appointed to analyze the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation. She stated that Mr. Durham and different prosecutors grilled her for greater than eight hours concerning the intelligence evaluation.
“They have been in search of bias in our work,” Ms. Miller stated. “They didn’t discover any.” Mr. Durham’s remaining report discovered no fault with the 2017 intelligence evaluation.
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump’s anger about what he calls the “Russia hoax” has festered for years, a grievance so deep he now sees Mr. Putin as his ally in victimhood.
Mr. Putin has spent years attempting to form Mr. Trump’s pondering on Ukraine, and there’s now little daylight between each males’s public statements concerning the conflict.
The primary time that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin met in particular person, throughout a July 2017 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the Russian president used much of the time disparaging Ukraine as a corrupt, fabricated nation.
He stated that Russia had each proper to exert affect over Ukraine. He even justified Russian navy operations within the nation by elevating the historic instance of President Theodore Roosevelt’s perception that the US had the correct to intervene within the inside affairs of Latin American international locations.
Mr. Trump is a longtime admirer of Roosevelt.
Leaving the assembly, Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, advised anxious White Home aides that Mr. Putin had completed his “Okay.G.B. shtick,” and that Mr. Trump had not pushed again on any of the Russian president’s assertions about Ukraine.
Greater than two years later, the Home impeached Mr. Trump due to a July 2019 telephone name he had with Mr. Zelensky, throughout which he made continued American navy help to Ukraine contingent on Mr. Zelensky serving to dig up grime on his political opponents.
The episode additional radicalized Mr. Trump’s views not solely towards Ukraine but additionally to his perceived “deep state” enemies who testified through the impeachment proceedings.
It additionally started to radicalize different Republicans towards Ukraine, who started to echo a number of the language that Mr. Putin has lengthy used concerning the nation.
This convergence of views has turn into much more pronounced within the weeks since Mr. Trump got here again to energy, as his administration presses Ukraine to barter a peace take care of Russia.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterised the battle in Ukraine on Fox News not as a transparent case of Russian aggression, however as a harmful “proxy conflict” between the US and Russia.
Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, stated in an announcement afterward that he agreed entirely. It was, he stated, one other instance of the positions of the White Home and the Kremlin aligning “completely.”
