After years of loud admiration for the Russian leader, Trump’s tune has recently changed
President Donald Trump often speaks of Vladimir Putin more like a close personal friend than one of his main adversaries.
When the two leaders had their first official summit in Helsinki in the summer of 2018, he told reporters he was taking the Russian leader at his word: that Moscow had not interfered in the 2016 election, contradicting his own intelligence community’s conclusion.
“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump said, sending his spy agencies into a tailspin.
Of course, it suited Trump to adopt that position. US intelligence believed Russia interfered to help secure Trump’s victory, and harm the campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton.
At other times, though, his comments have seemed less obviously self-serving.
A ‘savvy’ invasion
When Russia launched a full invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022, he described the Russian leader’s actions as “genius” and “savvy”, marking a sharp divergence from the horror expressed by virtually every other Western politician.
When Trump was re-elected, he touted his “very good relationship” with the Russian leader, which he claimed would enable him to end the war in 24 hours.
He also attacked Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, using the same language that the Kremlin did to denounce him, incorrectly as a “dictator”, and falsely claiming that Kyiv had started the war.
He and Vice President JD Vance chewed out Zelensky in a public Oval Office meeting that had no precedent.
But suddenly it appears that Trump is not quite so enamoured with his counterpart.
“I want him to stop shooting, sit down and sign a deal,” Trump told reporters when asked what Putin needed to do after a deadly missile strike on Kyiv.
“We have the confines of a deal, I believe, and I want him to sign it and be done with it.”
Last week, at least nine people were killed and 70 injured in that strike on Kyiv. Among them were children.
‘Vladimir, STOP!’
“I was very disappointed that missiles were flying, [fired] by Russia,” Trump said. “I was surprised and disappointed, very disappointed, that they did the bombing of those places after discussion.”
On social media, Trump even made what felt like a personal appeal.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing,” he wrote. “Vladimir, STOP!”
What has led to change in both the tone and content of Trump’s language?
Trump may finally be understanding that securing a lasting peace deal, or even a ceasefire that held for a few months, was not going to be as simple as he claimed.
As experts had warned, Putin is a skilled and ruthless adversary, who appears to care little either the lives of his own soldiers, or Ukrainians. He’s been a challenge for countless US and European leaders, not just Trump. He thinks that Ukraine should be part of Russia and longs to push Nato further from its borders.
Trump probably believed he did have some sort of bond with Putin, of who he recently said: “I’ve known him for a long time now, we had to go through the Russian hoax”.
People often said Trump admired Putin’s near absolute power, his grip over the media and his crushing of dissent, common traits with Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Some of his supporters also admired the kind of country Putin appeared to project – white, conservative, Christian. In 2024 Putin said he wanted Russia to be a a “safe haven” for citizens of people in the West who wanted to escape “destructive neoliberal ideas”.
And, painfully for Trump, 100 days into his term where polls show many people disapprove of his performance, he is being robbed of what he believed would be an easy “win”.
In a rare moment of inner reflection, Trump even acknowledged Putin appeared to have been playing him.
He wrote: “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.”
What next for Ukraine?
Trump and his White House are continuing to push hard for a deal.
A week ago Trump predicted a deal would materialise in less than a week. When the deadline passed, he said “two weeks or less” was the new timeframe.
Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said on Sunday that “We’re close, but we’re not close enough.”
That narrative started to go sideways on Monday, when Putin suggested two brief ceasefires around Moscow’s treasured Victory Day celebrations, marking the end of the Second World War.
Zelensky rejected that proposal, saying a ceasefire should be 30 days or longer, as the US proposed more than a month ago. It was not an encouraging sign.