How Trump’s Policies Have Helped Russia and Furthered Putin’s Goals

The Washington Post

13:18 JST, March 27, 2025

President Donald Trump’s pivot toward Russia, through a series of concessions and policy changes coupled with threats against Washington’s traditional allies, is ushering in a world order more amenable to Moscow, according to Russian analysts.

Trump’s talk of taking over the Panama Canal, making Canada the 51st state and getting Greenland “one way or another” appears to be rupturing the post-World War II order in favor of a world without constraints on territorial expansion by force – and one closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view.

Trump “is ideologically closer to Putin than, say, to [French President Emmanuel] Macron,” Vladislav Surkov, a former deputy premier who helped neuter Russia’s democracy and engineer the invasions of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, told French magazine L’Express.

Peace negotiations, he said, will deliver Russia’s goal: Ukraine’s defeat through either war or diplomacy, and its partition “into natural parts.” The Russian world, he continued, has no borders and “we will expand in all directions, as God wills, and as far as our resources allow.”

Trump’s policy is “beneficial to Russia,” analyst Mikhail Yemelyanov wrote in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “Trump is ready to make serious concessions to Russia without demanding reciprocal steps.” The multipolar world “has already arrived. And Trump is already living in it,” he added.

Here are the major shifts by the Trump administration that benefit Russia:

Concessions on Ukraine peace talks

Even before peace talks began, the Trump administration publicly rejected key demands from Kyiv, including NATO membership and keeping conquered Ukrainian territory on the negotiating table.

In contentious comments that suggested tacit U.S. acceptance that Russia has legitimate claims on Ukrainian territory, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff said five regions annexed by Moscow were part of Russia, and “this has always been the issue.” Russia, he said, has “reclaimed them.”

Witkoff claimed that annexation referendums were proof that an “overwhelming majority” in the regions “want to be under Russian rule,” although the U.N. General Assembly in 2022 deplored Russia’s “attempted annexation of Ukrainian land as blatant disregard for the bedrock principles on which the Organization was founded.”

Trump’s negotiators have also promised economic deals with Russia once a peace deal is signed – a major goal for Putin that would help restore Russia’s economy.

As peace talks continue, several U.S. national security agencies have stopped work countering Russian sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks. The U.S. Cyber Command was ordered to halt planning of offensive cyber operations against Russia. It is not clear whether these measures were temporary confidence-building measures during peace talks or a permanent change.

Recent partial-ceasefire talks for the Black Sea may grant Russia reentry into the SWIFT system for global money transfers under the guise of selling grain – long a desire of Putin’s government.

Putin, a trustworthy friend

Under Trump, Putin is no longer seen as an unpredictable adversary bent on ending U.S. global hegemony, but a smart, gracious and likable friend who, according to Witkoff, won’t take any more Ukrainian territory or attack Europe in the future.

“First of all, why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine,” he said, despite the fact that Russia has used political interference and military aggression to attempt to subjugate Ukraine throughout Putin’s 25-year rule.

“I liked him. I thought he was straight up with me,” Witkoff said in an interview aired Friday. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy.”

With that, Putin has shed his pariah status in Washington to be restored as a global leader who can help bring stability to the Middle East or partner with the United States to export Russian Arctic gas to Europe.

Trump, meanwhile, has accused Kyiv of starting the war and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator – echoing Putin’s own claims.

End of war crimes inquiries

Putin was indicted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2023 over the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children.

But the U.S. State Department this month halted funding for a three-year project by the Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab to trace the fates of thousands of abducted children. It also barred any evidence from being sent to the court. Yale’s work had contributed to six ICC indictments against Russian officials, including Putin.

At the time, researchers lost access to a trove of information, including satellite imagery and biometric data tracking the identities and locations of as many as 35,000 Ukrainian children – information critical to returning them home.

The Trump administration also stopped working with the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression – a multinational investigative unit under Eurojust, the European Union’s agency for criminal justice cooperation – to prosecute those responsible for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Cuts to U.S. soft power

For years, the Kremlin has bitterly opposed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America. The Trump administration is now working to eliminate all of them or slash their funding and staff. The organizations have been major tools of American soft power, promoting democratic values, countering autocrats, presenting accurate reporting in regions where news is censored, and helping vulnerable populations.

In 2017, Moscow designated RFE/RL as a foreign agent, slapping fines on the organization and eventually forcing its operations in Russia into bankruptcy. The organization left the country in 2022 but continued to report on it. In 2024, Russia designated it as an “undesirable organization,” meaning anyone who worked for RFE/RL, was interviewed by it, donated to it or posted its content could face criminal charges.

An RFE/RL editor, Alsu Kurmasheva, was arrested in 2023 and jailed, convicted of spreading false news about the war in Ukraine. She was freed last year as part of a prisoner exchange.

Despite the harassment, RFE/RL continued to report, but Trump’s decision to eliminate it may succeed where the Kremlin failed. RFE/RL has taken legal action against funding cuts, as have Voice of America and USAID employees.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attacked USAID last month, saying U.S. tools of soft power were used “to keep afloat the painful and perverted narratives of American ultraliberals.”

She said USAID posed “more risks than aid” and vowed that Russia would continue “to suppress outside attempts to undermine stability and security in our common space under the pretext of alleged concern for democracy.”

Many small independent Russian and Ukrainian media outlets were supported by USAID funding.

Tensions with allies

One of Putin’s key strategic goals during his quarter-century in power has been to weaken NATO and divide the U.S. from Europe, but Trump seems to have hit the fast-forward button.

Trump has upended decades of U.S. foreign policy by pivoting to closer relations with Russia, while threatening NATO allies and pausing military aid and intelligence cooperation with Ukraine.

Trump, who said the E.U. was “formed to screw the United States,” has also threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Europe.

According to former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, Trump almost withdrew from NATO in 2018. Trump has threatened not to defend NATO allies that don’t meet a target of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, and in January he said the target should be raised to 5 percent.

The administration’s chill toward Europe was laid bare when Vice President JD Vance scolded European leaders at the Munich Security Conference last month, calling on Europe to “step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned NATO defense ministers last month that they couldn’t assume U.S. forces would stay in Europe forever, with Washington no longer primarily focused on European security, leaving NATO allies wondering if Trump could pull out troops from Europe in coming years. One of Putin’s avowed goals has been to roll back NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.

The apparent hostility of Vance and Hegseth toward Europe surfaced in a group chat on Signal by U.S. security officials that accidentally included a journalist from the Atlantic.

In the chat, which discussed military planning for a U.S. assault on Houthi militants in Yemen, an official believed to be Vance opposed the strikes because Houthi attacks in the Red Sea most affect European shipping, posting, “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” An official believed to be Hegseth responded, “VP, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.”