Trump doesn’t understand Putin

OPINION:

Last month’s diplomatic implosion at the White House with President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was extremely disappointing. It should have never happened. Diplomacy begins behind closed doors, not before a worldwide audience. Perhaps Mr. Trump knew what was going to unfold. Being very knowledgeable about the impact of television from his days as host of a reality TV show, it’s probably not ironic that he characterized the debacle as “great television.”

Some reports surfaced that Mr. Zelenskyy was warned he may be drawn into such a situation. There certainly has been no love lost between him and Trump. The relationship first soured in 2019 during a phone call. During that call, Mr. Trump attempted to leverage U.S. military aid to Ukraine in return for Mr. Zelenskyy’s investigating President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Hunter was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, and Mr. Trump wanted dirt on political rival Joe Biden. It was this phone call that ultimately led to Mr. Trump’s impeachment.

During the most recent presidential campaign, Mr. Trump’s comments about the Ukrainian war left no doubt where he stood and his feelings about Mr. Zelenskyy. The fallout from his impeachment still well in his mind was evidenced in Mr. Trump’s calling Mr. Zelenskyy a dictator, saying he had a four percent approval rating and insisting Ukraine started the war with Russia—all patently false statements.

What’s more puzzling, though, is Mr. Trump’s apparent deep admiration of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Those feelings came to light in 2016 when Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Helsinki for a summit. At the time, U.S. intelligence agencies were contending that the Russians had interfered in the presidential elections. After his meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump was asked if he believed his own intelligence agencies or the Russian president regarding the meddling allegations.

“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he replied.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2016 that Russia was behind an effort to tip the scale of the U.S. election against Hillary Clinton, with a state-authorized campaign of cyber-attacks and fake news stories planted on social media. Eventually, evidence led to a dozen indictments against Russian military officers for their role in the campaign.

Here are just a few other items for Mr. Trump to ponder about Mr. Putin and Russia, many of which are war crimes:

The war Mr. Putin has started is the biggest land war in Europe since Hitler. Mr. Putin’s forces have killed or maimed hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians. Mr. Putin’s missiles have targeted apartments, schools, a children’s hospital, children’s playgrounds, medical facilities, a university, museums and train stations.

Russia has also continued to target the Ukrainian power grid. Russian military forces have tortured and killed many Ukrainian soldiers, a violation of every international rule of warfare and kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian-born children from their parents and sent them to new homes in Russia while Mr. Putin has murdered many of his critics who have been shot or poisoned either in Russia itself or pursued in other countries.

Our own State Department has proven that Russian forces used chemical weapons over 500 times since the war began.

Mr. Putin has broken countless promises during his tenure as Russia’s president. One of the most significant is his breaking the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. In that agreement, the signers (U.S., U.K. and Russia) said Ukraine would relinquish its nuclear arsenal inherited from the then Soviet Union and transfer the weapons to Russia. Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal was the world’s third largest at the time.

In exchange, the signatories to the Budapest Memorandum pledged to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and refrain from the use or threat of military force. Russia breached those commitments when it annexed Crimea in 2014 and then invaded Ukraine in 2022.

It’s very clear why Mr. Zelenskyy is cautiously negotiating any peace agreement. Russia’s track record of abiding by promises signed in treaties, how it conducts war or simply how it responds to those who criticize its leaders is non-existent. President Ronald Reagan has been proven correct many times over when he called the then Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

Why, then, did the U.S. vote against a recent U.N. General Assembly resolution that condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine and called for the occupied territory to be returned to Ukraine? The other countries that voted with Russia against the resolution included China, Iran and North Korea—not the world’s most model countries. Although the U.N. does not command a great deal of global respect, our failure to acknowledge Russia’s actions against Ukraine provides Putin a level of comfort.

Mr. Putin and his colleagues certainly took great glee when Trump cut off aid to Ukraine and paused the sharing of intelligence with it, albeit for a short time. U.S. Cyber Command’s suspending offensive operations against Russia was certainly also met with smiles. Cyber espionage allows adversaries, such as Russia, to steal competitive secrets from American businesses or disrupt systems that manage water plants, traffic systems, governments and hospitals. The Cyber Command is tasked with combating it.

The Justice Department has also disbanded an FBI task force that has focused on foreign influence campaigns such as those Russia used to target elections.

After the U.N. vote, the diplomatic meltdown at the White House with Mr. Zelenskyy and the several actions Mr. Trump took, top shelf vodka most likely flowed in celebration at the Kremlin. A spokesman there said that America’s “rapidly changing” foreign policy “largely coincides with our [Russian] vision,” and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Mr. Trump for his “common sense.”

We should be embarrassed with those words from Russian leaders. They clearly show Russian pleasure with the actions Mr. Trump took.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s chief diplomat, provided a very humbling assessment of the situation. “Today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader,” she said recently.

Those Americans who have prided themselves on our global respect and leadership should be embarrassed over Kallas’ assessment about what she sees as a diminished U.S. global role.

The war in Ukraine should indeed be brought to a close, and the U.S. role in making that happen is expected because that is who we are as a world leader. However, what happened at the White House and how our leadership has handled the situation is troubling. Instead, our leadership needs to enter any negotiations with its eyes open and a sound understanding of Russia’s track record under Vladimir Putin.

• Rear Adm. Jurkowsky is a 31-year Navy veteran who served in several global regions. He is the author of “The Secret Sauce for Organizational Success: Leadership and Communications on the Same Page.” He has served as an adjunct instructor at Anne Arundel Community College in Annapolis, Md. and lectured on current affairs.