When the Obvious Answer Is Too Awful to Face

The standard critical explanations circulating in the public discussion to account for Donald Trump’s recent caution-to-the-wind support for Vladimir Putin’s aims in Ukraine, and his simultaneous overt branding of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine as the only true impediment to peace in the region, have been variations on the theme of Trump’s shortsighted eagerness to lower American fuel prices in a desperate attempt to turn the tide in the Republican Party’s favour before November’s midterm elections. It seems to me that the critics, at least the American ones, are seeking to shield themselves from the far more obvious, though far more disturbing, explanation for Trump’s sudden removal of the last veil in his long dance of surrender to Putin: This may be Putin’s last chance to cash in on his investment.

Everyone who has paid even moderate attention to American politics since 2016 knows that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has actively and vigorously promoted Donald Trump’s ascendancy, and has cultivated and cajoled both iterations of Trump’s presidential administration, along with courting sympathy and alliance with various popular figures on the fringes of Trump’s MAGA movement — much as the Kremlin has done with similarly “populist” political movements in Europe. Likewise, everyone who has paid any attention to American and world politics since 2016 knows that in all matters in which Putin’s Russia has a significant vested interest, Trump’s rhetoric and policies have consistently come down on the side of fundamental support for those Russian interests.

But hasn’t the Trump administration provided material support to Ukraine, in direct opposition to Putin’s aggression? Yes and no — or rather, to be more precise, “yes” but no. Of course, since the Biden administration made a significant (though slow) commitment of military equipment and intelligence to Ukraine, with the broad bipartisan support of both the American Congress and the American public, Trump’s second administration could not simply reverse all these forms of assistance summarily in January 2025 without drawing too stark a line of influence directly to the Kremlin. That is, to announce bluntly that United States foreign policy was now to be determined by and aligned with Russian policy would have been too brazen a move even for the ignoramus Trump — although the public gang mugging of Zelensky in the Oval Office very early in 2025 sent the clearest possible signal of the intended change of direction. More importantly, too blatant and immediate a reversal would have been counterproductive for Putin, inasmuch as his regime was still seen by most Americans as an enemy of the United States; thus, any benefits to be gained by Putin from his long-cultivated relationship with Trump and the MAGA movement would best be attained incrementally, without shattering the generally-accepted optics of national rivalry and suspicion between the two former Cold War adversaries. This, after all, is how hostile subversion works; subversion is only necessary where explicit alliance is impossible. And so Putin, a man of the KGB, an organization which specialized in just this sort of realistic incrementalism, has generally maintained the public illusion of distance and disagreement while fomenting and fostering useful compromises beneath the surface of the Trump administration, thereby weakening the opponent’s foundations from within while appearing (to the willfully blind, at least) to be standing apart in frustrated defiance.

It is therefore pragmatically unavoidable, even desirable for all concerned, that under Trump’s thoroughly corrupt second administration some of the old apparatus of American support for Ukraine has been sustained, albeit with ever-decreasing commitment and consistency. Nevertheless, the Biden-era commitments of military hardware to support Ukraine’s self-defense have already been cancelled for all intents and purposes — the American-made weapons going to Ukraine now were purchased from the U.S. by Europe. Of course, there inevitably remain a few members of the Trump administration — though none of the leading appointees — whose sympathies remain aligned with genuine American interests and the Western alliance, and who therefore continue to support Ukraine as much as they can. But they do so only to the extent that they can get away with it, within an overarching administration that has increasingly adopted Trump’s peace-at-any-price approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, which is merely a euphemism for “peace as Putin defines it.”

We are back to our initial question, then: Why is Trump suddenly doubling down on all his former pro-Putin and anti-Zelensky comments at this particular moment, and now even backing up his usual anti-West rhetoric with direct violations of the sanctions against Russia and Kremlin-associated businesses that have been U.S. policy since early in the Ukraine war, and that have even been reinforced in recent months with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress? The most common answer I have seen so far is the convoluted idea that Trump is trying to salvage his party’s fate in the midterms by lowering fuel prices at home. This answer, I submit, is a wonderful example of normalcy bias, manifested in this case as the inability, or refusal, to see the most plausible causal account of a situation when that most plausible account implies premises which would be too unsettling or life-altering to admit, i.e., too fundamentally shattering of the comforting sense of underlying normalcy that allows most of us to carry on with our daily lives in spite of political events.

And what is this normalcy bias — or more simply, if you will, this weak spirit’s reticence to open one’s eyes when one is afraid of what one might see — concealing from the common perception? Only the obvious, namely that since we all know Putin has invested a great deal of his regime’s hopes and survival instincts in tacit support for, and backroom cajoling of, Trump and his political faction with more than ten years of propaganda, Potemkin village promises, and ego-and-greed-massaging business propositions, common sense dictates that he is not about to let all that effort and expense go to waste at the moment of truth. Putin’s moment of truth in Ukraine — the prospect of losing the war and wasting millions of young Russian lives, facing a more unified Europe at last, knowing that China holds his leash unless he can control America’s — coincides with that of his most usefully idiotic asset, Trump: the U.S. midterm elections.

Trump appears increasingly likely to lose his Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and hence to lose his ability to rule by executive fiat with impunity as he has been doing throughout this second presidential term. What is more, the administration faces an increasing likelihood of impeachments and investigations on the horizon after the midterms. In short, Trump’s practical value to Putin is about to shrink by vast degrees. And yet the single most important project on his agenda — a precedent-setting victory in Ukraine and hence the normalization of Russian aggression against neighbours made increasingly despondent and defeatist in the light of American indifference (or worse) — remains unfulfilled, and will possibly remain permanently unfulfilled, perhaps even thwarted outright, should Trump’s opposition gain decision-making authority in November. Hence, the time for decisive and final action against Ukraine (and by extension against the West in general) is now, before Trump becomes a lame duck president and the subject of a dozen Democratic hearings and impeachment efforts. That is, the time for Putin to redeem his Trump voucher once and for all has arrived. To miss this moment would be to watch idly as all his political subversion efforts in America unravel. He has the pragmatic populist “deal-making” demagogue he wants, the one he has supported all along, the one his KGB mind has been working on for years, for just such a moment. He effectively controls the most important elements of U.S. foreign policy at this moment, but that control appears to be on the verge of fading dramatically within days.

Putin needs more than tone-shifting rhetoric from his investment now, before the investment becomes worthless. He needs practical action from the U.S. that will boost his war machine’s failing economic prospects, break the will of the Ukrainian people at last, force his regime back into the practical status of legitimacy on the world stage, and send a final clear message to Europe that the United States is no longer its ally in any important sense, but rather a rogue, pragmatic game-player prone to moral equivalency arguments and myopic anti-European “Christian nationalism.”

Donald Trump, who has been a dutiful servant of Putin’s subversion of the West for more than a decade now, with admirable consistency and allegiance, is doing what he was chosen to do. He is doing it more vocally and blatantly, not because he really believes this will help him in the midterms — it obviously won’t — but because he knows, as his leash holder knows, that his opportunity to come through for Putin, to do his sponsor’s bidding on the world stage and be granted his cookies as reward, is running out. It’s now or never for this gross, greed-fed alliance of evil ignorance and ignorant evil. Trump is doing now what he will lack the power to do very soon. Will it be enough to save Putin’s face and his war aims in Ukraine, as it is obviously intended to do? Probably not. But it will be interesting to see how Putin responds to Trump’s obedience, and to his eventual recognition that even this most remarkable success in Russian infiltration of U.S. politics has not been quite enough to achieve his long-term goals.

Garry Kasparov, responding to the deniers of the obvious, once challenged his listeners to name one thing Trump would have done differently if he had been a Russian asset. When asked by an interviewer whether this strange alignment of Putin’s wishes with Trump’s statements and policies could be a mere coincidence, Kasparov responded, “I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in the KGB.” Sadly, I believe, most Americans do not. They simply cannot, due to that dread of encountering a terrifying, normalcy-destroying reality.