What must Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin be thinking? After the conviction that Donald Trump received last month for sexually assaulting a journalist, how must they have reacted to the news this week that the former and possible future president of the United States has been charged with seven serious crimes and could he end up in jail?
First, we can assume, with a mixture of bewilderment and laughter. The concept of equality before the law is far from them. Justice in Russia exists to protect the powerful and scare the weak. And as for the idea that individuals like them, the masters, can’t do what they want with a woman: H ahaha! They’re crazy, the Yankees…
The second reaction must have been more weighted. With the possible exception of Trump himself, no one has a greater interest than Putin in the orange daffodil winning next year’s presidential election. After nearly a year and a half of war, Putin’s need for Trump to overcome legal difficulties and return to the White House once again is urgent. The war has been a horror for Ukraine, a fiasco for Russia and a danger for Putin. For the Russian capo it could be a matter of life and death.
Let’s not forget that Putin’s plan A had been to conquer Ukraine in a couple of weeks. Today, Russian forces are stalled in the southeast of the country with the possibility that the current Ukrainian counter-offensive will lead to further humiliations.
Putin’s plan B is to conquer not all of Ukraine, an impossible mission, but to keep the Donbass region and Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. To achieve this goal, to force a partial surrender that Ukraine does not consider today, s ‘must severely cut arms supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces. On which country does Ukraine depend more than any other for the aforementioned armaments? From the United States. Without Washington’s military support, what happens? Ukraine will be unable to launch further offensive operations, will suffer to defend against Russian airstrikes against its cities, and will have no choice but to give in to Putin’s terms to end the war. Is it possible that Washington will relent in its determination to continue supporting Ukraine? If Trump comes to power, yes. He has indicated it more than once.
On top of that, there is the delicious prospect for Putin of a President Trump breaking with NATO. Trump, as people who worked with him in the White House have explained, seriously considered leaving it. If he were to return to the presidency and withdraw the United States from the transatlantic military body, which has been facing Russia for 74 years, Putin would record the most glorious victory of his two decades in power, securing two more decades, or the let him live.
It is possible, by the way, that when Trump says he has the solution to end the war “within 24 hours” he means precisely this, the withdrawal of the United States from NATO. The threat that the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO would supposedly represent for Russia is the supposed reason that Putin gave for launching into the war. With NATO reduced to a paper tiger, Putin could declare victory and end the war, with the added allure of knowing that Ukraine would be at the mercy of future Russian imperialist adventures, as would the Baltic countries and other former Soviet colonies.
Putin’s plan B, reduced to its essence, is to have his soul mate Trump become president again. Soul mates in the sense expressed this week by one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Chris Christie said that Trump was “a lonely, self-centered man who spends his life looking in the mirror”. That is, the same as Putin, plus two details that Christie did not mention: the insecurity and resentment they share. The only difference is that the Russian hides it better.
Plan C – or rather disaster number one – for Putin would be for Biden to remain in the White House after the 2024 election. In that case, Ukraine would remain in the fight with the highest morale ever, the Russians they would continue to suffer horrendous casualties for the defense of increasingly barren territories and the murmurs already heard against Putin in the vicinity of the Kremlin would run the risk of becoming a crescendo.
In other words, Putin’s fate is tied to Trump’s. US domestic politics is Russian domestic politics. Therefore, what they are asking in the Kremlin today is the same thing they are asking in Washington. What will be the political impact in the United States of criminal charges against Trump? Will it affect his chances of being nominated as the Republican candidate in the election? And if it doesn’t affect them, could he still beat Biden?
The answer is that, on the one hand, Trump will surely see his presidential candidacy consolidated, as his portrayal of himself as a martyr against “the fascists” (in his words) at the Department of Justice resonates with his base, where the intention to vote for him rose even more after the conviction last month for sexual assault. On the other hand, the most logical thing is to think that the decisive vote of the “undecided” will lean against him in the general elections.
But there is little logic in the political world of the United States since Trump broke into it and it cannot be ruled out that the more he finds himself against the strings of the establishment, the more the drums of civil war will be heard again, or of generalized political violence, which caused so much alarm in Washington after the insurrection in the Capitol by the Trump faithful in January 2021.
Two desirable scenarios are presented for Putin. U, an internal conflict that undermines the desire of the United States to provide military support to a country 8,000 kilometers away. Two, that one way or another, Trump wins the election.
Half the world is wondering when the war in Ukraine will end. The answer: whenever Putin wants. As much as the Ukrainians advance on the battlefield, Russia has a lot in store. So Putin will prolong the war, at least as long as his hope that Trump will be president of the United States again remains alive.
