WASHINGTON — In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has taken measures that strengthen Russia’s position and may rehabilitate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s soiled reputation in the international community.
Trump returned to office vowing to swiftly end the Russia-Ukraine war, proclaiming last year that he was on “nobody’s side” except “humanity’s side.” But the neutral posture he said he has adopted is peeling away.
A specific strategic goal underlies Trump’s overtures to Putin, foreign policy experts said. The idea is to entice him to come to the negotiating table and end a war that is now in its fifth year. Whether it will work is another question.
Trump’s lead negotiator in the Russia-Ukraine war, Steve Witkoff, called Putin “a humanitarian” in St. Petersburg on Wednesday upon the release of retired American teacher Stephen Hubbard, whom Russia had detained since 2022. Even Republican lawmakers balked at the remark.
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Witkoff thanks Putin for release of retired American teacher
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“I would describe Putin as a warmonger, a thug. He’s certainly not a humanitarian,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is in a tough fight for re-election, said Wednesday.
“He is the aggressor in the war against Ukraine,” she added at a campaign stop at a factory in Norway, Maine.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who isn’t running for re-election following public disagreements with Trump, was blunter. “WTF, Steve? Look up the definition of ‘humanitarian,’” he posted on social media.
Freedom House, a nonprofit that works to expand freedom and democracy, describes Russia as an authoritarian country where power is “concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin.” The Kremlin “manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent,” the group says.
Trump tends to see diplomacy through the prism of personal relations, and he has made no secret of his regard for Putin. When he hosted Putin for a summit meeting in Alaska last year in a futile attempt to end the war, the U.S. rolled out a red carpet. A picture of Trump and Putin standing side by side hangs in the White House’s Palm Room.
By contrast, Trump has stepped up his on-again, off-again criticism of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. As he left the White House on Monday for a campaign trip, he said Zelenskyy “is a man that should have had this war settled a long time ago. I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”
Blandishments are a tool Trump is using to get Putin to strike a deal, said Robert O’Brien, who was White House national security adviser in Trump’s first term. Not much else has worked.
“We thought we could get the war settled two years ago, but Putin has been intractable in not coming to the table. President Trump is using cordiality to get Putin to negotiate,” O’Brien said in an interview.
“There’d be no hope of getting Putin to engage in talks, with the U.S. as the mediator, if he viewed Trump as 100% aligned with Ukraine in this situation,” he added.
Michael Kimmage, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the Trump administration’s “theory of the case is that by distancing themselves from Ukraine and by flattering the Russians, they can accomplish something at the bargaining table.”
He doesn’t expect the gambit to succeed, though.
“In the absence of a clear agenda coming from the White House and in the absence of very serious forms of leverage over Russia — which the Trump administration has shied away from — progress at the negotiating table is very difficult to imagine,” he said.
Asked about Trump’s warmer attitude toward Putin in recent weeks, the White House pointed to his comments at a roundtable on cybercrime when he was asked about Witkoff labeling the Russian leader “a humanitarian.”
Trump responded: “I guess you could say for that particular purpose — for the purpose of allowing a man who was thinking he was going to be in prison for life out.”
He went on to add that the U.S. is negotiating with Russia to end the war in Ukraine and was complimentary towards Russia for having “not gotten involved with Iran.” Trump said that some “stupid people” were critical of his position and “the last thing I want to do is upset an apple cart where we’re getting close to settling a war.”
Ending the war between Russia and Ukraine was one of Trump’s signature promises in the 2024 campaign. He had confidently predicted he’d get it done on his first day back in office, but he has since conceded that the problem is more stubborn than he’d envisioned.
As Trump works to broker a peace deal, one of his recent gestures to Putin is to treat him as a statesman, rather than a global outcast.
Trump thanked Putin on Oct. 9 after they reached a deal in which Russia agreed to release hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel fuel into global markets. Trump said the move would ease energy costs, but relief at the pump hasn’t happened yet. Since then, the average price of a gallon of diesel has risen 4 cents a gallon, from $6.26 to $6.30.
Trump invited Putin to attend the G20 international summit meeting at his Doral golf resort in Miami, and he said this week that he’s open to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss nuclear weapons.
A summit meeting alongside the leaders of the world’s two largest economies would be a boon to Putin, whom the West has ostracized since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. World leaders expelled Putin from an elite international organization called the G8 after that attack.
“There’s no question that Trump has been trying to reintegrate Putin into polite society,” said Brett Bruen, who was director of global engagement in the Obama White House.
At the G20 summit at Trump’s golf club in December, Putin would be “the shiny object that Trump would dangle in front of the world press corps as purported progress toward peace,” Bruen said.
A question Europeans are asking is what sort of peace deal does Trump visualize. Would it be fair to Ukraine or carve up the country at Putin’s behest, they ask? If Ukraine ceded territory to Putin as the price of ending the war, that would only embolden him to threaten more states, a European official said.
Marko Mihkelson, chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Estonia, which borders Russia, said in an interview: “If you reward aggressors” and signal that they can “achieve their goals through aggression, then that doesn’t stop them from continuing.”
Faced with a war in Iran that he started and a war in Europe that he can’t stop, Trump is advised by a thinning inner circle. A senior aide, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, left the White House over the summer. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of Trump’s confidants and a Russia hawk, died unexpectedly in July.
Two months later, Trump signed a bill named after Graham that sanctioned Russian officials and parts of the country’s economy.
Trump waived those sanctions last week — which Graham might have warned against in their many phone calls and golf games.
“Lindsey Graham is rolling over in his grave,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters Wednesday.