Letter From the Editors

A month ago in Anchorage, the picture for Ukraine looked bleak: A smiling Putin shook hands with an equally smiling Trump on the runway of a US military base. Then during a wrap-up presser, observers noted that Putin spoke first, which is a breach of protocol, and talked significantly longer than his US counterpart. Trump, for once, looked lost for words. At the time, Republic wrote: “We don’t know exactly what the two leaders discussed behind closed doors, but it seems it was during this tête-à-tête that the Russian president found the key to his American counterpart’s behavior.”

Fast forward to late September, and the US president is now calling Russia a “paper tiger” from the UN rostrum and stating that Ukraine can not only win back its 1991 territories, but “go further.” So what’s behind Trump’s 180-degree turn? Experts are still scratching their heads. Andrei Kortunov comes to the same conclusion as Republic did a month earlier: Trump “is highly susceptible to outside influences and is often guided by the opinions of those he has just talked to.” Now that Zelensky had his ear in New York, it’s “Goodbye, Lenin.” Meaning Putin. Another possible (and slightly more sinister explanation) is that Trump is cleverly trying to extricate himself from the Russia-Ukraine war while still saving face as the “universal peacemaker”: The Daily Telegraph notes: “Instead of promising new support for Ukraine or stepping up action against Russia, Trump seems to be passing the buck to Europe and NATO.” So like a magician whose conjuring trick has gone awry, Trump is essentially making himself disappear.

Another theory is that Trump likes to twist his partner’s arm when making a deal: He already twisted Zelensky’s in February, when he got Ukraine to agree to a mineral deal. Now it’s Putin’s turn. Of course, Putin has been around the block a few times (he’s been circling it for 25 years now), so twisting his arm may take some work. In fact, as Fyodor Krasheninnikov states in an interview with Republic, Putin is the one clear winner in the Ukraine war. He doesn’t even care if the Russian economy ends up critically dependent on China. If anything, “you can be China’s puppet and still rule over Russia for the rest of your life,” Krasheninnikov quips. Look no further than North Korea and its perennial ruler. Krasheninnikov also takes aim at those who fight Putin at the expense of Russia: “Things that harm Russia’s economy don’t necessarily harm Putin, and things that harm Putin will eventually help Russia and the Russian economy.” He brings up the EU’s idea to pull short-term stay visas for Russians: It may make Brussels bureaucrats look good, but it won’t make the slightest dent in Putin’s militarist dictatorship. In this sense, Trump boasting that the Russian economy is “crashing” makes very little difference to the Man in the Kremlin. And there are signs of economic trouble, indeed. Take for one the creeping fuel shortage engulfing Russia. The situation is the worst in the southern parts of the country, writes Kholod, with one out of every six gas stations running on empty. Since late July, when the fuel crisis began, 360 gas stations have closed across the country. Now, even drivers in Moscow and Leningrad Province are feeling the pinch. It probably goes without saying that prices have soared as supply has dried up. Initially, the government tried to shrug it off as a temporary glitch. “There is indeed a small shortage of oil products, which is being covered by accumulated reserves,” Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak reported chipperly. He pointedly omitted that Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries are behind the problem. So while Russia’s economy may be coasting on fumes, it seems like Putin is just coasting.