The Biden White House has taken positions opposite those of the Trump administration on NATO. State television in Russia emphasized the Kremlin will not allow American influence in Ukraine, “ regardless of the cost to us, and regardless of the cost to those responsible for it.” After Biden’s election, Russian political elites once again articulated profound, existential anxieties about a renewed United States projecting its power abroad. And for good reason: from the start, the Biden administration has been at odds with Putin on the issues Putin needs to care about to preserve his own rule. This comfort evaporated with the election of Biden. Their comfort with Trump was evident from the start Americans may remember that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was warmly received in the White House and photographed in the Oval Office, while Russian parliament members toasted Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. The truth is that during his administration, Trump’s policy alignment with Putin advanced the aims of Russia’s political elites, who could imagine that the United States was on their side. At rallies Trump repeats the same claims he made the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol: “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.” Trump makes assertions about American elections that echo the Kremlin’s, even reciting a trope about voting by “ dead souls” that comes from 19th century Russian literature. When Zelenskyy beat an incumbent president in a landslide, Trump actually withheld military aid to Ukraine, sending personal emissaries to Kyiv to try to pressure and undermine Zelenskyy in the eyes of Ukrainians by asking him to “ do us a favor, though.”Īnd both while in office and since leaving it, Trump worked tirelessly to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections, going to great yet unsuccessful lengths to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential contest. During the Trump administration’s first year, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was still a showman whose comedy troupe performed patriotic musical numbers with lyrics like “There’s fog over Brussels and frost in Washington” and used a MeToo leitmotif comparing Ukraine’s treatment by Russia and the West to a sexual assault. Trump also broke with longstanding bipartisan support of Ukraine. ![]() ![]() As a candidate, Trump had even remarked that, “ Maybe NATO will dissolve, and that’s OK, that’s not the worst thing in the world.” Under Trump, there was little daylight between Russia and the United States on these issues.Įven as Trump’s vocal criticisms may have inadvertently strengthened the alliance, Trump worked to diminish the influence of NATO, reportedly planning to withdraw from it in his second term. ![]() Plus, NATO had already expanded eastward to Russia’s borders, and the Kremlin already controlled Crimea and had proxies in the Donbas.Ĭonsider where Trump and Biden stand on three key issue areas the Kremlin cares deeply about: NATO, political leadership in Ukraine and undermining democracy. Wouldn’t it have been easier for Putin to invade Ukraine when Trump was president? The United States had abdicated its traditional leadership role in global alliances and left much of the rest of the world open to expanded Chinese and Russian influence. After all, the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency were an ebb tide of American power and influence, and Trump himself frequently went out of his way not to antagonize the Russian leader. Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a ground war against Ukraine that he apparently has been planning for years, many have wondered why he waited until now. Jessica Pisano is an associate professor of politics at the New School for Social Research and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
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