Has the warmth gone from the Trump-Putin bromance?

Trump may be realising Putin is a rival, not a ‘friend’, writes Sean O’Grady – and we all know how The Donald treats his rivals...

Donald Trump has a complicated relationship with Vladimir Putin, to say the least.

Not so long ago, during his first term as president, he seemed to like and admire the Russian strongman – no doubt seeing him as a kindred spirit: clever, audacious, authoritarian, predatory.

At the Helsinki summit, in 2018, Trump went as far as to publicly state that he was more prepared to trust the word of this dictator than that of his own intelligence agencies. There was, to put it lightly, consternation. Observers wondered what appalling kompromat Putin had on the US president that would make him behave in this way, like something out of The Manchurian Candidate.

During his time out of office, after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump again praised Putin for his audacity. Shortly after the ill-fated “special military operation” was launched in 2022, Trump declared at a fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago: “They say, ‘Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions... I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country – really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

Subsequent to that, Trump said he could end the war in a day, something widely taken to mean he’d force Volodymyr Zelensky to capitulate and let Putin keep his illegal territorial gains.

Now, though, the warmth seems to have gone from the Trump-Putin bromance. Could it be that, as with any pair of gangsters in a town not big enough for the two of them, they are turning from friends to rivals?

Perhaps their interests are not so well aligned, because the newly re-elected US president doesn’t want to see Putin too powerful. Trump doesn’t want to preside over a Russian victory in Ukraine in what would inevitably be perceived around the world as another defeat for America (and Trump). It would also be seen as a repeat of the debacle in Kabul, where the chaotic withdrawal of Allied forces, during the first few months of Joe Biden’s presidency, was pre-ordained by the surrender treaty Trump was conned into signing with the Taliban.

At any rate, there is certainly an absence of the old rapport. When Putin mischievously said he was supporting Kamala Harris in the election, he may have been being playful – but since election day, Moscow has been muted in its remarks about Trump, beyond noting his past bravery during assassination attempts.

Putin took his time to congratulate his counterpart. The Kremlin’s clowning television proxies, so often sycophantic to Trump, have been more sceptical than they were when Trump got in in 2016.

Certainly, when the two men did belatedly get to speak on a call, Trump seems to have been less of a pushover, and even a little menacing, again like a mobster warning a rival off his territory. According to the American account, The Donald reminded Vlad about “Washington’s sizeable military presence in Europe” and warned his rival not to escalate the war in Ukraine. No mafiosi wants to lose face before his initiation ceremony, which for Trump arrives on 20 January.

What came out of Trump’s call with Zelensky, with Elon Musk jumping in at points, is less clear. However, we do know that Musk vitally supported Ukraine with access to his Starlink satellite networks, though not in occupied Crimea. The Musk-Putin relationship is hard to fathom.

In the end, sad to say, the facts on the ground matter more than anything. Even those of us who’d prefer a Nato intervention to force Russia out of Crimea and the east of Ukraine know that won’t happen.

The West gave the Ukrainians just enough support to give them hope, to hang on, and not to lose – but it never gave them enough to win. There’s little chance that Trump would, either. Like it or not, there will be a “compromise” over peace, but Trump is too proud, and America too strong, for that to be on easy terms for President Putin.

After all, Ukraine is “a great piece of land with a lot of people in it”, and it might be of some use to the US – even to Trump himself. President-elect Trump famously prides himself on being the master of the “art of the deal”, and there would be nothing in it for him if he were to allow Putin to take over the country. His “adviser”, Bryan Lanza, has been disowned for suggesting that defending Ukraine isn’t in the interest of the US, though Donald Trump Jr has been spared such a fate after posting a childish jibe at Zelensky.

It seems obvious, actually, that Trump will not want his first big foreign initiative to be an abject humiliation in Ukraine, and he’ll need Zelensky and the European allies to at least acquiesce in the deal, whatever it turns out to be.

Putin will be put under pressure. After all, Trump craves respect even more than adulation – and there are two upstart global gangsters over on the “east side”, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, who will be watching for any signs of weakness.