Don’t expect Putin-Trump affinity to translate into policy

Trump and Putin may sing from the same hymn sheet, but US aides remain hostile to Russia.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Picture: AP

In September 2013, Vladimir Putin gave an important speech near the ancient city of Novgorod, which he called “not just the geographical but the spiritual centre of Russia”. The key to the country’s progress, he said, was “spiritual, cultural and national self-determination. Without this we will not be able to withstand internal and external challenges.”

Military, technological and economic strength notwithstanding, the determining factor was the nation’s “intellectual, spiritual and moral strength”, grounded in its “history, values and traditions”.

He lamented the depravity of godless, rootless Western liberalism. “We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation.”

Russia, on the other hand, was a “state civilisation reinforced by the Russian people, the Russian language, Russian culture and the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Listening to Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw (not just “the geographic heart of Europe”, he noted, but a place where one can see “the soul of Europe”) before last week’s G20 meeting, Putin must have felt a frisson of recognition.

“The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out, ‘We Want God’,” Trump said.

The West, he asserted, is bound together by the “culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are … We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive.”

The parallels are not accidental. Trump’s speech reflected the views of his advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who see Putin as a fellow nationalist and crusader against cosmopolitanism. The Kremlin seemed pleased.

Trump’s reference to Russia “destabilising” Ukraine and his comparison of the Soviet invasion of Poland to that by Nazi Germany would normally provoke fierce denunciations from Moscow, but this time the reaction was tepid.

Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s chief propagandist, dismissed the speech as a cynical effort to market American liquid natural gas and military equipment to Poland. This is an approach the Kremlin recognises and welcomes.

From Russia’s point of view, by delivering his speech in Poland, Trump delineated America’s sphere of influence.

Putin’s decision to make a 480km detour on his way to Hamburg to avoid flying over Poland and the Baltic states symbolically confirmed that line. It implied that Russia makes no claim on members of NATO and the EU, but considers anything to the east its own sphere of influence, especially Ukraine.

After meeting Trump at the G20, Putin offered Kiev a bear hug. “The interests of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples ... coincide,” he said. Ukraine, which has suffered a Russian-instigated war that has killed about 10,000 of its citizens, watched nervously as Putin and Trump shook hands.

Putin described the US President as a konkretny (down-to-earth) man he could do business with, and welcomed US involvement in negotiations over Ukraine.

He has always maintained that Ukraine’s revolution in 2014 was America’s doing, and that its fate should thus be discussed with the US rather than Germany or France.

The Kremlin has hailed Trump’s presidency as the end of liberal interventionism. Yet whatever Trump may have suggested, other senior officials seem to be continuing America’s longstanding policies.

Trump has faced allegations of colluding with Russia since his election campaign last year.

Those accusations were boosted this week by revelations of his son’s dealings with a Kremlin-connected lawyer.

But these very suspicions have made it politically impossible for him to do any far-ranging deal with Putin on foreign policy.

Moreover, his Russia experts are extremely knowledgeable and prudent.

The most influential, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, gained insight into Putin’s system of crony capitalism during his time as Russia director at ExxonMobil, an energy company.

National Security Adviser HR McMaster is no appeaser, and Fiona Hill, Trump’s top adviser on Russia, understands Putin’s system well (though, strangely, neither was included in Trump’s meeting with Putin).

Just before that meeting, the State Department announced that Kurt Volker, a former ambassador to NATO, will be America’s new representative in Ukraine. Volker called on NATO to push back against Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and criticised the Minsk II agreement that Ukraine was forced to sign in 2015.

He has urged the US to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, with the goal not simply of reaching a ceasefire but of restoring Ukraine’s sovereignty over its ­territory.

Tillerson affirmed the same goal in a visit to Kiev the day after the G20. The war in Ukraine, he said, was planned and launched from Moscow, and it was up to Russia to take the first step towards de-escalation. Until it does so, sanctions against Russia will remain in place.

He said America wanted to break the current stalemate and would not be constrained by the Minsk agreement, widely seen as dead.

Tillerson was equally focused on pressing Ukraine to curb corruption and create an independent judiciary.

Ukrainian reformers and civic activists had worried about losing US support under Trump. But Tillerson said fighting corruption was crucial to reviving foreign investment, which has been absent since 2014.

Bringing American business into Ukraine is also seen as a way to secure the country, by creating an implicit American guarantee.

For now, the Russian President does not seem too worried. Unlike American officials, who believe that Ukraine can be a viable state, Putin is convinced that (with a bit of Russian help) it will fail, and the country will descend into chaos.

Only Ukraine can prove him wrong.