Dem
47
GOP
53
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said that Ukraine could take back all the territory that Russia has won in its 3½-year-long war on Ukraine. He also called Russia a paper tiger. If he really means it, it would be a 180-degree reverse from February, when he told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he had no cards. But maybe it was just a random meaningless bleat and tomorrow Trump will reverse his position again.
Nevertheless, Russia has reacted to Trump's remark. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Russia is in no way a tiger. Still, Russia is more compared with a bear. There are no paper bears." Peskov also said that Trump's attempt to block the sale of Russian oil and gas is just to boost American sales.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was even worse. He said Trump had been given a dose of alternative reality. Then he added: "I have no doubt—he will come back. He always comes back. The main thing is to radically change your point of view on various issues more often. And everything will be fine. That's the essence of successful government through social media." Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian "news" channel RT, compared Trump to a carnival huckster. She tweeted: "Trump debuts as the tarot card reader telling the thrice-divorced lady that she is going to meet that billionaire prince after all, as long as she buys the magic crystals." None of these people would dare say these things without having first cleared them with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
So it seems that Trump's bromance with Putin may actually be over. During Trump v1.0, Trump was Putin's lapdog. What happened? We don't know. Our best guess is that at the Alaska meeting Trump told Putin to end the war in Ukraine so he could get the Nobel Peace Prize and Putin said NYET, loudly and often. Trump could have been shocked anyone would dare say that to him. If the relationship between the two has truly soured (and that remains to be seen), it is of great geopolitical importance, for Ukraine, for NATO, and for Trump's relationship with hawkish Republicans in Congress. But that is a big "if." (V)