The Kremlin views Trump’s election victory as an opportunity that it believes should be approached with a combination of wariness and toughness. It wasted little time on plaudits. Two days after the election, Vladimir Putin used the occasion of his annual Valdai Club speech to reiterate the maximal terms for ending the Russia-Ukraine war that he first set out in June.
Since then, the message has been amplified by his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, by the rigorously tough and professional Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and others. On 9 November, Ryabkov, with his customary bluntness, stated: “It must be understood that a simple resolution of the problems surrounding events in Ukraine cannot take place.” Trump’s desire for a swift end to the war simply finds no echo in official Russian discourse.
There are three reasons for this.
First, the United States is seen as a systemic adversary. Trump’s victory does not alter the conviction that the United States will seek to maintain its ‘global hegemony’, nor does it alter Russia’s determination (supported by the ‘global majority’) to overturn it. Over the course of Trump’s first term, his administration had raised EUCOM’s budget by 41% (2018), it withdrew from the INF Treaty (2019), its special forces slaughtered 300 Wagner troops in eastern Syria (2018), it assassinated Iran’s top military commander, Qasem Soleimani (2020), it gave Europe a near ultimatum to reduce Russian gas imports, and it threatened to withdraw altogether from the New START Treaty (2020).
It is doubtful that Putin bought into the view that Trump was his infatuate (see preceding paragraph), but many in the west did, and Putin was willing to exploit that perception.
Second, 2024 is not 2016. In 2016, Trump’s election victory was an unexpected gift (most of the Russian commentariat, like its American equivalent, expected a Clinton victory). Moreover, Russia was not engulfed in full-scale war in 2016, its power was not stretched, it had achieved pre-eminence as an energy supplier to Europe, it had stabilised the South Caucasus largely to its liking, and its victorious Syria campaign underscored its determinant role in the Near and Middle East. It is doubtful that Putin bought into the view that Trump was his infatuate (see preceding paragraph), but many in the west did, and Putin was willing to exploit that perception. The stakes were relatively low, and he had little to lose from courting Trump. In 2024, the stakes are high. For the sake of winning in Ukraine, Putin has sacrificed most of the foregoing achievements. Outside the Ukrainian theatre (and apart from its nuclear arsenal), it has no military power to spare. Supposing Trump turns his wrath on Russia and, pace his July 2023 Fox News interview “gives Ukraine more than they ever got”? If Putin thought like Biden, he would bend over backwards to be conciliatory. Because he thinks like a Russian special services officer, he will simulate strength, even where he doesn’t have it, and build leverage. Whatever the reasoning, that is exactly what he is doing.
Ukraine loses little from an immediate end to the fighting unless, in exchange, it is forced to abandon its independence. Russia loses the primary leverage it has.
Third, Trump gains from a quick end to the war, but Putin does not. Not only Trump but Zelensky. Ukraine loses little from an immediate end to the fighting unless, in exchange, it is forced to abandon its independence. Russia loses the primary leverage it has. For Trump, ‘forever wars’ are a distraction from America’s ‘real’ interests (beginning with the southern border), a ‘blank cheque’ for corrupt regimes and lost causes, as well as a tax on the earnings of American workers. For Putin, they are a means of destroying the enemy and his prospects of recovery, shaping the wider battlefield against the ‘collective west’, keeping the Russian economy mobilised and its people submissive.
Trump therefore faces a choice: either force Russia to the table by “giving Ukraine more than they ever got” or bow to Putin’s terms.
Trump therefore faces a choice: either force Russia to the table by “giving Ukraine more than they ever got” or bow to Putin’s terms. If Trump embarks on the first course, he will have to prove it. Putin has no prima facie reason to believe that he will. Trump’s threats (2017) to “totally destroy” North Korea in the UN General Assembly amounted to nothing. Why should his bluster on Fox News amount to more? Putin has every reason to test him, and he will.
If Trump embarks on the latter course, he will confront two obstacles. In the first place, Ukraine will not agree to die. Many will flee (possibly at least as many as already have fled); the rest, several million of them, will fight. The bottom line is that Ukraine’s destruction, if it does take place, will not be consummated by agreement but by slaughter.
Second, if Trump bows to Putin’s terms, he will find himself on a collision course with NATO. The United States does not have the authority to ‘guarantee’ Ukraine’s neutrality. The 2008 Bucharest Summit declaration — “Ukraine will be a member of NATO” — is NATO policy. It will only cease to be NATO policy when 32 Allies say so. If Trump shies away from confronting Putin, it is more likely than not that a coalition of the willing (which might include the UK as well as Poland, the Nordic and Baltic states) will find ways of supporting Ukraine’s resistance, however adequate or inadequate that assistance might prove to be.
By way of reiteration and conclusion, if Donald Trump believes he can end the war quickly and on acceptable terms, he is unlikely to receive help from Russia.