What does Putin have on Trump?

This question pops up in my mind every time I fail to explain Trump’s action in a way other than the one the question implies.

Fact 1: The Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression. Since February, 2022, the country has been desperately fighting for her survival as a sovereign nation.

Fact 2: Putin has built a fascist regime in Russia whose declared aim is the restoration of the Soviet empire along Stalin lines.

Fact 3: Large swaths of that empire are now NATO members, supposedly presenting a united front against any aggression.

Fact 4: The Ukraine, unlike Russia, has been developing civilised institutions with the clear intention of shedding Russia’s tyranny and joining the West.

Fact 5: This gives the West a vested interest, both moral and strategic, in helping the Ukraine in her fight against Russia’s brutal invasion.

Fact 6: Western countries, including the US, have been acting in that spirit since the first foray of Russian troops into the Ukraine’s territory in 2014.

Having renounced direct military involvement, they’ve been assisting the Ukraine with armament supplies and intelligence data. These have been coming in a steady trickle sufficient to keep the Ukraine in the fight, but not to enable her to win.

Fact 7: The Ukrainian army has acquitted itself with courage and skill, beating the Russians to a virtual standstill and making them pay dearly for every inch of Ukrainian territory they claim.

After three-and-a-half years of desperate fighting, and having lost over a million soldiers dead and wounded, the Russians have barely managed to occupy 20 per cent of the Ukraine – this in spite of their huge numerical superiority and vast reserves of military hardware.

Fact 8: Over the past few days, the Russian offensive has begun to escalate. In keeping with their usual practice, the Russians target residential areas of Ukrainian cities, especially Kiev.

This morning, they hit the Ukraine with 550 Shahed drones and ballistic missiles, the biggest such attack since, well, a few days earlier, when 537 drones and missiles were launched.

Fact 9: The Ukraine can use her home-made AA defences to ward off drone attacks, more or less, but not to intercept ballistic missiles.

The country heavily depends on Western missile defences, such as the Patriot systems. But the rockets for those systems are running out, leaving the country’s civil population at the mercy of Russian brutality.

Fact 10: At the same time, the Russians are stepping up their preparations for escalating another major summer offensive. North Korea has sent over another 30,000 contingent to reinforce her evil accomplice. Moreover, German and Dutch intelligence shows that the Russians are increasingly using chemical and other weapons banned internationally.

Add these 10 facts together, and ask yourself what should be the only rational and moral action on the part of the Ukraine’s most important ally, the US.

Correct. The US must step up its supplies of armaments to the Ukraine, especially the defensive weapons required to protect civilians. At the same time, the US president should use the available communication channels to exert maximum pressure on Putin.

If you don’t desist, the message should be, we’ll arm the Ukraine to a level sufficient for winning the war, not just keeping the invaders at bay. The US economy is ready for the long haul. Is yours, Mr Putin? Especially if we hit all your foreign customers with huge secondary sanctions?

Yet Donald Trump has done exactly the opposite. He has been trying to practise his much-vaunted art of the deal to bring the two parties to the negotiation table.

President Zelensky has stated publicly that the Ukraine is ready. President Putin has stated, both publicly and privately, that the war will continue until its root causes have been eliminated. He didn’t mean the real root causes, himself and his fascist regime. He meant the Ukraine’s sovereignty.

The last time Putin told Trump to mind his own business was in a long phone conversation yesterday. Trump expressed (feigned?) disappointment, saying: “I didn’t make any progress with him at all.” 

And nevertheless, the US, meaning Trump, announced the suspension of arms supplies to the Ukraine, especially those of missile and air defence systems. Moreover, America looks as if she is going to thwart Germany’s plan to buy two Patriot systems and hundreds of rockets from the US for the Ukraine.

Doing this at the crucial point in the war runs so contrary to America’s strategic interests, along with her moral and contractual obligations (remember the Budapest memorandum?), that it’s hard to find a rational explanation.

The one Trump has put forth, that America has sent so many weapons to the Ukraine that she hasn’t enough left to defend herself, doesn’t cut much ice. The US has demonstrated its capacity to step up armament production to any level, almost instantly.

That’s why FDR described America, correctly, as the Arsenal of Democracy. Trump’s frustration with America’s NATO allies not pulling their weight is perfectly understandable. That problem must be solved, and those countries have already taken some steps in that direction, albeit meek ones.

But first things first: let’s stop this fascist attack on the West and, that done, sort the accounting out. Trump’s action, taken at this moment, is inexplicable rationally.

This brings back the question in the title. Since long before his first term, Trump has always acted as an admirer and champion of Putin’s regime. A compendium of his panegyrics of Putin would run several pages of small type, and one could detect genuine sympathy there.

Ever since the beginning of Russia’s aggression against the Ukraine, Trump has been the most prominent putinversteher, someone who feels Putin’s pain and sympathises with his bogus concerns. Considering the broad pro-Ukrainian consensus in America, Trump has had to couch such sentiments in moderate terms, but not enough to conceal them.

Even now, after Bucha and Mariupol, Trumps talks of Putin as a friend, a slightly wayward one but a friend nevertheless. Suspicions of bad faith have been persistent, although an investigation of Trump’s dealings with Putin didn’t reveal any indictable offence.

That could mean that no offence had been committed or that the parties involved had been good at covering their tracks. I incline towards the second possibility.

Before he entered politics, Trump had aggressively pursued business with Russia. Now, Russian commerce is controlled – actually owned – by organised crime fused with the ruling KGB elite. Hence Trump had to lie with those dogs, and catching their fleas would have been hard to avoid.

This is conjecture, but it’s borne out by Trump’s subsequent behaviour. He incessantly talks about ending the war, but one gets the distinct impression that he’d see the Ukraine’s capitulation as an acceptable conclusion.

When discussing the causes of the war, Trump and some key members of his cabinet routinely repeat Kremlin propaganda, often word for word. At the same time, they treat Zelensky as an annoying supplicant, rather than as the leader of a country heroically trying to stem the fascist onslaught on the West.

Whatever Putin may have on Trump has to be something major. The Donald isn’t exactly known as a choirboy in matters fiscal or sexual, and many of his transgressions are in the public domain already.

For the Russians to have real clout they’d have to possess a dossier of earth-shattering misdeeds. I for one find it possible to believe Trump might have provided material for that file.

Still, I’m prepared to entertain other explanations of Trump’s actions. But not any other explanations. Those suggesting that, by helping the Ukraine, America has denuded her own defences, needn’t apply.