What are Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin thinking? After the conviction that Donald Trump received last month for sexual assault against a journalist, how will 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 end up in jail? the jail?
First, we can assume, with a mixture of shock 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 guys like them, the masters, can’t do what their balls sing with a woman: Hahaha! The Yankees are crazy…
The second reaction will have been more pondered. With the possible exception of Trump himself, there is no one more interested than Putin in seeing the orange daffodil win next year’s presidential election. After almost a year and a half of war, Putin’s need for Trump to get over his legal predicament and return once more to the White House 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 or death.
Let’s not forget that Putin’s plan A had been to conquer the Ukraine in a couple of weeks. Today Russian forces are bogged down in the southeast of the country, with the possibility that the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive will lead to further humiliation.
Putin’s plan B is not to conquer all of Ukraine, an impossible mission, but to keep the Donbass region and Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. To achieve this objective, to force a partial surrender that Ukraine today does not contemplate, there are to severely cut off arms supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces. On which country does Ukraine depend more than any other for such weapons? From the United States. Without military support from Washington, what happens? Ukraine will be unable to launch any more offensive operations, will suffer to defend against Russian air strikes against its cities, and will have no choice but to acquiesce to Putin’s terms to end the war. Is it possible for Washington to relent in its determination to continue supporting Ukraine? If Trump comes to power, yes. He has already indicated this more than once.
On top of that, there is the delicious possibility for Putin that a President Trump breaks with NATO. Trump, as people who worked alongside him in the White House have said, seriously considered leaving it. If he were to return to the presidency and withdraw the United States from the transatlantic military body, which has stood up to Russia for 74 years, Putin would record the most glorious victory of his two decades in power, securing himself two more decades, or the rest of his life. .
It is possible, by the way, that when Trump says that he has the solution to end the war “in 24 hours” he is referring to precisely that, to the US withdrawal from NATO. The threat that Ukraine’s incorporation into it would supposedly represent for Russia is the supposed reason that Putin gave for launching into war. With NATO turned into a paper tiger, Putin could declare victory and end the war, with the added lure of knowing that Ukraine would be at the mercy of future Russian imperialist adventures, as would the Baltics and other former colonies. soviet
Putin’s Plan B, boiled down to its essence, is to get his soul mate Trump back as president. Soul mate in the sense expressed this week by one of Trump’s rivals for the Republican Party’s presidential candidacy. Chris Christie said that Trump was “a lonely, self-centered man who spends his life looking in the mirror.” In other words, just like 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 elections. In that case, Ukraine would continue to fight with morale higher than ever, the Russians would continue to suffer. appalling casualties for the defense of increasingly vacant territories and the murmurs that are already heard against Putin in the vicinity of the Kremlin risk becoming a crescendo.
In other words, Putin’s fate is tied to Trump’s. US domestic policy is Russian domestic policy. Therefore, what is being asked in the Kremlin today is the same as what is being asked in Washington. What will be the political impact in the United States of the indictment of criminal offenses against Trump? Will it affect his chances of being nominated as the Republican candidate in the elections? And if it doesn’t affect them, could he still win over Biden?
The answer is that, on the one hand, Trump will surely see his presidential candidacy cemented, as his portrayal of himself as a martyr against “the fascists” (his words) at the Justice Department resonates with his base, whose intent to vote for he rose further after his conviction last month for sexual assault. On the other hand, it is logical to think that the decisive vote of the “undecided” will lean against him in the general elections.
But there is little logic in the American political world since Trump burst into it and it cannot be ruled out that the more the establishment finds itself against the ropes, the more the drums of civil war, or of generalized political violence, will be heard again, which is so alarming. they caused in Washington after the insurrection in the Capitol of the Trumpists faithful in January 2021.
Two appetizing scenarios are presented for Putin. One, 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 elections.
Half the world wonders 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 reserve. With which Putin will prolong the war, at the very least, as long as he continues to hope that Trump will once again be president of the United States.
