Trump On Putin

Yesterday, I noted that prior to the first weeks of the Russo-Ukraine War, there was an effective consensus that Russia was the second-strongest military power and a near peer to the US and NATO. Trump has had a fair amount of criticism for remarks earlier this year that have been interpreted as "praising Putin", but I think if we take them in context of prevailing world opinion, they don't strike me as unusual. This piece at CNN lists some of Trump's remarks on Putin from last spring:

At a campaign rally in Georgia [March 26], the former President, again, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The smartest one gets to the top,” Trump told the crowd. “That didn’t work so well recently in our country. But they ask me, ‘Is Putin smart?’ Yes, Putin was smart. And I actually thought he was going to be negotiating. I said, ‘That’s a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 soldiers on the border.’”

Trump added that Putin made a “big mistake,” but that “it looked like a great negotiation.”

I find this hard to fault, given the assumptions pretty much everyone in public life had about Putin up to the failure of the February invasion. He had a powerful army. Ukraine had been in the news chiefly for Burisma and its $50,000 a month payments to Hunter Biden, which suggested the country was a hopelessly corrupt backwater in the Afghan league. Putin's demand on the face of it was simply that the West provide assurance that Ukraine would enter neither the EU nor NATO and continue to serve as a neutral buffer for Russia. Putin's stick would be that Russian tanks would roll into Kyiv, and any effort by the West to stop this would be an overextension.

Earlier in the war, this position was at least arguable. In May, Pope Francis said,

“NATO barking at Russia’s doors” may have raised alarms in the Kremlin about the Western European alliance’s intentions in Ukraine. “I can’t say if (Russia’s) anger was provoked,” he continued, “but facilitated, maybe yes.”

What permanently changed the consensus on Putin's intentions was the revelation of Russian atrocities in places like Bucha following its withdrawal from the Kyiv region in April, which showed that Putin didn't in practice want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer, but instead was willing to exterminate some large part of its population and pillage its modest wealth. Even Pope Francis's public statements have hardened toward Russia since that time. However, at the time of the invasion and its runup, nobody prominent in public life foresaw that outcome. In a February 22 interview, two days before the invasion on February 24, Trump said,

BUCK [SEXTON]: Mr. President, in the last 24 hours we know Russia has said that they are recognizing two breakaway regions of Ukraine, and now this White House is stating that this is an “invasion.” That’s a strong word. What went wrong here? What has the current occupant of the Oval Office done that he could have done differently?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, what went wrong was a rigged election and what went wrong is a candidate that shouldn’t be there and a man that has no concept of what he’s doing. I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. (sarcastic)

So, Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.

By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.

Trump at that stage, before any tanks had actually rolled in, was relying on Putin's public statements as an indication of his strategy, and it's worth noting that if that was all that happened -- Putin entered disputed regions exclusively as a "peacekeeping" force -- the situation would have been far less clear and Putin's position at least more sustainable. And Trump's later remarks quoted above a month later, March 26, support this view: Putin made a “big mistake” in an all-out invasion, but in the days immediately prior, “it looked like a great negotiation.” Later in the February 22 interview, Trump said,

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, even “Sleepy Eyes” Chuck Todd said this weekend during his show — I was watching it for a change and he said — (summarized), “How come there’s been no invasion during the period of time that the Trump administration was there but they did invade — very severely invade — with Obama and then they waited and then they invaded?”

This would never have happened if we were there. But he did. Chuck Todd asked that question. How come there was none of this happening during the Trump administration? I knew Putin very well. I got along with him great. He liked me. I liked him. I mean, you know, he’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride. But the way he — and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country. He’s acting a little differently I think now.

This again is consistent with observations by other prominent figures like Condoleeza Rice that Putin has changed and is not the person they worked with. And Trump is saying this two days before the actual invasion, when the extent of Putin's miscalculation was completely unknown. Some of these remarks have been taken out of context, including by President Zelensky as recently as a week ago:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was surprised by former President Trump’s continued praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin even after Moscow invaded Ukraine, given how much information Trump was privy to about the fellow world leader.

“I believe he had enough time, plenty of time, to understand who Putin is,” Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview aired Sunday.

. . . “Ukraine in his eyes is too far away. But this war has no distances it could not cover, so I believe he needs to look at the situation without, as we say, pink glasses on,” Zelensky said, per CNN’s translation.

However, as of March 15, a little over two weeks after the invasion, Trump said,

“I’m surprised — I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating,” Trump told the outlet in a phone interview. “I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate.”

. . . “I figured he was going to make a good deal like everybody else does with the United States and the other people they tend to deal with — you know, like every trade deal. We’ve never made a good trade deal until I came along,” Trump said. “And then he went in — and I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed. It’s a very sad thing for the world. He’s very much changed.”

As far as I can tell, these remarks are the bulk of what Trump has said since the invasion. I would guess that Zelensky has been shown only what Trump said in the February 22 interview, and that's the basis for his comments this month. We'll have to see what else Trump may eventually have to say about Ukraine in light of more recent developments, but from what we currently have, once he became more fully aware of the actual circumstances, his position has been that Putin has changed and is not the negotiating genius he once thought.