Since emerging on the national political scene a decade ago, Donald Trump has openly admired the dictatorial style of Vladimir Putin. Trump’s lean toward Russia was investigated, it was psychoanalyzed—yet many were still shocked when recently Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky, of Ukraine, in the Oval Office, and seemed to be taking Putin’s side in the conflict. When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, one of David Remnick’s first calls was to Stephen Kotkin, a historian of Russia and a fellow at the Hoover Institution. He speaks with Kotkin again, as Trump is pressuring Ukraine to accept a “deal.” Kotkin doesn’t endorse Trump’s position, but notes that it reflects real changes in America’s place in the world and the limits of American power. “You can say that Trump is wrong in his analysis of the world, you can say that Trump’s methods are abominable,” Kotkin says. “But you can’t say that American power is sufficient to meet its current commitments on the trajectory that we’re on.”
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Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. From his emergence on the political scene a decade ago, Donald Trump displayed what you could call a curious admiration for the Russian president and dictator Vladimir Putin. It was baffling and it was ominous, too. It remains so. Trump's lean toward Russia was investigated and it was psychoanalyzed.
And his affinity for Putin is as vivid as his disdain for Ukraine's democratically elected leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. So now we're reckoning with the distinct possibility that the leadership of the United States has taken a moral and a strategic turn that puts us all on the side of Russia and blames Ukraine for provoking the invasion in the first place. That's how the Kremlin sees it as well.
Over a week ago, Trump and J.D. Vance absolutely berated Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House. And then they announced a pause in military aid to Ukraine and a freeze on intelligence sharing. Those are moves that will surely hobble Ukraine's ability to defend itself. Zelensky is now trying to bolster more and more support from the leaders of Europe who met last week at a defense summit.
For more than 30 years, since I was a reporter for The Washington Post in Moscow, I've been talking about Russia over and over again with Stephen Kotkin. Stephen Kotkin is a biographer of Joseph Stalin and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Three years ago, when Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine, Steve was my first call.
And this is the third time that we're talking here on the Radio Hour since the war began. Steve, let's begin with the most obvious thing. What did you make of that dramatic Oval Office encounter between Trump and Zelenskyy?
As I understand what happened based upon the commentary is that Trump's aides set up a situation where there was going to be a deal over minerals and the minerals deal was going to work because it was going to give the U.S. a vested interest in Ukraine. And in their mind, Putin was going to do the rest of the work. Because Putin is as nasty as nasty comes.
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