Law, Power, and Justice

Susan B. Glasser on President Donald Trump’s ever-evolving alliance with Vladimir Putin, especially in Putin’s war against Ukraine.
— Read on www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/it-took-trump-only-twenty-four-days-to-sell-out-ukraine

Has Vladimir Putin ever had a better few days in Washington? Donald Trump, just four weeks into his second term, has executed a breathtaking pivot toward Moscow, reversing course after years of ruptured relations between the U.S. and Russia that resulted from Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. First, Trump signed off on gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, delighting the Russian government, whose spokeswoman called it “a machine for interfering” in other countries’ affairs. Also on the chopping block may soon be Radio Free Europe, a Cold War legacy project whose coverage of Putin’s Russia has long infuriated the Kremlin. “Yes, shut them down,” Trump’s billionaire buddy and sometimes Putin interlocutor Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend.

Then, on Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s controversial nominee to become the director of National Intelligence. Gabbard has, like Trump himself, often amplified Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine—a key reason Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader, refused to vote for her. But he was the only holdout in a Senate Republican Conference that, as recently as Gabbard’s confirmation hearing last month, included a number of G.O.P. senators said to be queasy about her nomination. These were the stalwarts who once vowed to stand with Ukraine until it beat back Russia. Now they don’t even dare stand against a single Trump nominee.

That same day, Trump held his first formal phone call with Putin since returning to the White House. It could hardly have been more ominous for Ukraine—as clear a sign as possible that the American President who praised Russia’s war on its neighbor as an act of strategic “genius” now intends to force a ceasefire on Putin’s terms. The call, according to Trump’s report about it on his social-media feed, featured chummy references to the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union during the Second World War and a decision to “immediately” launch peace talks. Only afterward did Trump call Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky. It was all too obvious which of the two combatants he favored.