What does Donald Trump want from aligning so closely with Putin’s Russia?
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Lewis Goodall explains the facts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and explores what the US president seeks to gain from working so closely with Vladimir Putin.
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In brief…
- Donald Trump has smeared Ukraine, and its leader Volodomyr Zelensky, with misinformation as he grows ever closer to the Russian leader.
- Lewis Goodall says Trump sees Putin, and far right groups such as the AfD in Germany, as being on the same side of his MAGA approach to politics.
- He says Trump’s ultimate goal is to establish closer ties with Russia in order to block China from holding more power on the world stage.
What’s the story?
Donald Trump says he wants to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
To achieve this, the US president is aligning himself with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader who orchestrated the illegal invasion of its neighbour, and is smearing the Ukrainian leader, Volodomyr Zelensky, with disinformation.
Here are some facts about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, courtesy of The News Agents’ Lewis Goodall.
- This war did not start with Ukraine. Ukraine did not invade itself.
- Putin invaded. He is the sole aggressor.
- This conflict emerged primarily because Vladimir Putin could not deal with the fact that countries like Ukraine came to have the right to determine their own destinies, whether they were part of Russia or Europe.
But Donald Trump doesn't care about the facts, and this week, while preparing for peace-talks with Putin (and only Putin), he called Volodomyr Zelensky a "dictator" due to elections being postponed because of the war raging on its land.
Lewis has broken down the situation between Trump, Putin, the US, Russia and Ukraine, in a News Agents explainer, which you can watch below.
Ukraine War: The New Trump & Putin Axis Explained
"There hasn't been a free and fair election in Russia in years, if not decades, and there would have been a presidential election in Ukraine by now if Russia had never invaded," says Lewis.
He says Putin, with support from Trump and his "little helper" Elon Musk, intends to "manipulate" any potential Ukraine election to work in his favour.
Elsewhere, JD Vance – Trump's deputy president – also stepped into the situation, claiming the biggest threat to Europe does not come from Russia, does not come from China, but instead is from a lack of "free speech" within its own borders.
"Trump, and the people around Trump, like the fact that Putin is an autocrat," Lewis adds.
"They like the fact he's a traditionalist. They like the fact that he's not a liberal, European, or cosmopolitan.
"They see him, and his regime, as being on their side in the international culture war. That is why they lord someone like Putin, or the hard right AfD in Germany, at the same time as chastising and insulting their liberal democratic allies."
What is Trump's endgame here?
America has long been aligned with Europe, and other parts of the Western world, but Lewis believes this could be about to change.
“Trump and his people have been quite brazen and quite open about this,” he says.
“They have been clear that they see a lot of commercial financial opportunities for the normalisation of relations between the US and Russia, a normalisation that financially ultimately, would likely benefit people like them.”
He says it all comes back to Trump's vocal disapproval of China.
"So what is Trump doing? I think he's creating a US/Russia axis," he continues.
"We know that Trump has been obsessed with China's rise for decades, they think that by allying with Russia, by cleaving it away from its Chinese pay-masters, they can win the great strategic competition of the 21st century, not between the US and Russia and democracies and autocracies, but between the US and the Chinese Communist Party.”
He says the results of this could be "staggering" for Europe, and are likely to be felt for the full four years of Trump's second presidency, if not beyond.
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