The ideal default partner: why Trump is playing on Moscow’s side

Source: Author’s Facebook page

Trump will never say “I’m for Putin.” He will say he’s for “peace,” for a “good deal,” for “ending the war in one day.” He will say that Ukraine has to “accept something” because “it has no cards.” He will say that the war happened because of the “wrong president,” and that during his term it wouldn’t have happened. He will say a lot of things.

But at the level of consequences, his words and the proposed logic place him clearly on the side of the table where Moscow sits. Not because he reads “Russian World” before going to bed. But because the world he sees is convenient for the Kremlin: a world where Ukraine is not a subject, where Europe is ballast, where NATO is superfluous, and Putin is a “player with whom you can negotiate.”

Trump does not see the war as a clash of two worlds – freedom and empire, law and power, republic and colonial metropolis. He sees it as a protracted dispute between two poorly managed assets that spoil his beautiful picture of America focused on itself. Ukraine here is noise. Europe is a toxic investor. Russia is a problematic but great partner at the table. And he himself is the one who has to “close the deal” and write in his asset: “I stopped the war that weak Biden left me.” In this performance for the domestic voter, the Kremlin gets exactly what it wants: a formula in which aggression is not punished, but monetized, and the defender turns from a hero into a culprit for “fighting for too long and preventing a beautiful peace.”

When Trump tells Zelensky in the Oval Office, “You have no cards,” he is not just talking to him. He is sending a signal to everyone: Ukraine is not a player. Ukraine has no right to set conditions. Ukraine cannot say “no.” Ukraine can only choose between surrender with a signature and surrender without a signature. This phrase is not just a humiliation of a specific person. It is a violation of the logic of the modern world, where even the smallest state formally has the right to sovereignty. Trump is behaving like a broker at a sale of someone else’s property. He does not ask who the owner is. He is only interested in who is ready to quickly wave the papers and leave the room.

This is exactly what Moscow has been striving for from the beginning. It needs more than just a victory on the front. It needs a model in which the world recognizes: “Yes, Russia has the right to dictate terms to its neighbors if the neighbor has no “cards”. A precedent is needed when a country can be forced to “accept something” because someone big decided so. And it is this logic that Trump voices without shame. He does not speak the language of the articles of the UN Charter. He speaks the language of a mafia mediator: either you take what they give, or you continue to fight yourself. For Moscow, this is an ideal world: a world without law, but with “agreements”, without justice, but with “peace”, without Ukraine as a subject, but with Ukraine as a territory.

Trump is not an ideologue of the “Russian world”. He is an instinctive destroyer of the “Western world”, to which he formally belongs. He hates everything that reminds him of the system: institutions, treaties, alliance obligations, international law, agreed decisions. For him, NATO is a hostel for impudent homeless people who live at American expense. The EU is a competitor and a theater for weak leaders. Ukraine is a symbolic project of the Democrats, with which they cut off his oxygen in 2019 and 2020. He does not read the context of the war because of the Bucha, deportations, destroyed cities and millions of refugees. He reads it through one question: how does this interfere with my internal showdowns in America and how can I use it against Biden.

This is where Moscow gets the perfect partner “by default.” Because Putin also hates institutions, treaties, law, and alliance obligations. He also wants to dismantle NATO, turn the EU into a club of bankrupt nations, and the UN into a mess. Trump, fighting his own “system,” is actually doing the same job as the Kremlin: knocking the West out of the West. Putin does not need an alliance with Trump in the traditional sense. It is enough for him that the US president considers Ukraine a “boring problem,” Europe an “impudent sycophant,” and Russia a “player with whom to negotiate because it is strong.” This is quite enough for the entire Ukrainian front to crumble.

There is another layer that they don’t want to talk about out loud: personal type. Trump is pathologically in love with the archetype of the “strong leader”. He looks at Putin, Kim, Erdogan, Orban – and sees not dictators, but people who “do not allow themselves to be humiliated”. Who humiliate others. This is what attracts him: the opportunity to live above the laws, above parliaments, above judicial systems. For him, Putin is “someone who is forced to respect”. Zelensky, on the contrary, in American eyes is a figure who asks, appeals, begs, convinces. For democracy, this is normal. For Trump, it is a sign of weakness. He does not respect those who ask. He respects those who impose.

And if we put two figures in this perspective – Putin and Zelenskyy – then Trump’s choice becomes obvious, even if he himself does not realize it. He does not understand that a “strong leader” on foreign territory is an occupier, not a hero. He does not understand that peace established at the expense of another nation is not diplomacy, but a crime. For him, it is just a “successful deal”: we persuaded the Ukrainians to “accept something”, the Russians stopped shooting, I went out to the cameras and said: “I stopped the war”. All morality, law and justice are thrown out of the frame like unnecessary noise.

Trump is also playing on Moscow’s side because he does not believe in the value of alliances. He believes only in the value of the account. For him, supporting Ukraine is an expendable item in the budget. For his electorate, it is “someone else’s war for our money.” Putin has been working in this vein since the first days of the full-scale invasion: “war fatigue,” “close the border,” “think about your own people.” And Trump, building his campaign on isolationism, naturally picks up the Kremlin’s mantra: “why should we pay for democracy somewhere out there, on the outskirts of Europe.” For Russian strategy, this is an ideal ally: the leader of a superpower who voluntarily refuses to look beyond his own border.

When Trump says: “I inherited this war. It would never have happened if there had been the right president,” he simultaneously devalues the Ukrainian resistance and gives the Kremlin a gift. Because behind this phrase lies a simple subtext: the war is not the result of Russian imperial policy, not the result of twenty years of revanchism, the destruction of international norms, and preparations for annexations. The war is an “administration error.” This means that it can be corrected administratively, without punishing the real aggressor. And if so, then Putin is not the problem either. The problem is only the “wrong president,” who must be changed.

In this construction, Kyiv is transformed from an ally into a burden, from a partner into a bargaining chip. And that is why Trump’s rhetoric about the plan for Ukraine is so frankly cynical: “he’ll have to like it.” This is not even imperial language. This is the language of an auction: if you don’t like the conditions, you simply leave the hall without buying. The only difference is that here the “goods” are not an apartment in New York, but pieces of a living country that is defending itself from an aggressor.

The question is not whether Trump loves Moscow. The question is that he does not love anything that stands between him and his internal narrative of a winner. NATO stands. The EU stands. Ukraine stands. Putin does not stand – he fits into this story as a “difficult but manageable opponent” with whom one can play the “deal of the century”. Therefore, Trump’s voice, no matter how he justifies himself, resonates with the Kremlin. And while he is telling Ukraine: “Accept, because you have no cards”, somewhere in an office on Staraya Square someone is checking off the box: “Ukraine’s subjectivity has been completely undermined in the eyes of the West.”

Trump can convince himself as much as he wants that he is simply putting America above all else. But when America closes in on itself, when it stops seeing the difference between victim and aggressor, when it is ready to exchange pieces of foreign territories for beautiful headlines in newspapers, it always plays for one player. For the one who does not believe in law, but believes only in force. For Moscow. Even if the one who signs the papers repeats until the last day: “I am not on anyone’s side. I just make profitable deals.”

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