The Dark Alliance of Putin and Trump

“My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.” — New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman

After President Trump and Vice-President JD Vance "ambushed" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on live television, there could be no doubt. The United States has abandoned an ally and supported the Russian dictator who invaded Ukraine.

Canada and other nations now know that America cannot be trusted to keep its word.

This unthinkable turn of events raises a question that goes to the heart of Canada’s own national security: Why has Trump upended over 60 years of U.S. foreign policy that positioned democratic states as allies and Russia as adversary?

The day of the ambush, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau starkly mapped the fork in the road by pledging Canada would "continue to stand with Ukraine." He wrote on X: "Russia illegally and unjustifiably invaded Ukraine. For three years now, Ukrainians have fought with courage and resilience. Their fight for democracy, freedom, and sovereignty is a fight that matters to us all."

The observation resonates powerfully in this country as we watch a close friend and ally turn on us with ruinous tariffs and threats of annexation.

MSNBC journalist Rachel Maddow pried at the puzzle by asking the basic question: Who benefits from Trump’s unprecedented embrace of Putin’s Russia?

She noted that it seems the U.S. was switching sides in a war. Advantage Russia.

Foreign influence campaigns of the kind waged by Putin are designed to deepen division in countries. On her first day in the job, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pared back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Advantage Russia.

Bondi also disbanded efforts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs. Advantage Russia.

The CIA has been ordered to conduct the largest mass firing in 50 years. Advantage Russia.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was destroyed and Putin cheered.

Before peace negotiations even began with Ukraine at the table, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of Defense, declared that Ukraine can’t expect to keep territory, and that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO. Champagne corks popping in the Kremlin.

Trump wants Russia back in G7. Advantage the hitherto international pariah, Vladimir Putin.

Trump also has instructed that Russian sanctions – including those affecting some oligarchs – be lifted with the aim of establishing better economic and diplomatic relations with Moscow.

As for Ukraine, the embattled democracy invaded by Russia, Trump suspended delivery of all U.S. military aid to the country. Although the U.S. announced it resumed military aid and intelligence sharing on March 11, it has also threatened to cut off Starlink, the Internet eyes and ears for Ukraine’s battle commanders.

Trump has sidelined not just Canada but America’s European allies with nonsensical declarations. He said, for example, that Russia "bombing the hell out of Ukraine" was actually a sign that Russia wanted to end the war. War is peace?

During Trump’s first six weeks back in office, "the simple fact is that he has made few decisions on national security or foreign policy that have not been cheered by the Kremlin," sums up Mark Mazzetti in The New York Times.

And that is not lost on a significant chunk of the American electorate, based on comments made by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. Earlier this month, during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings for Trump cabinet nominees, Merkley asked nominees point blank: "Is President Trump a Russian asset?"

"People back home have been asking me this question, saying, if he was a Russian asset we would see exactly what he’s doing now," explained Merkley. "For example... Russian propaganda that Ukraine started the war... That Zelensky is a dictator... That U.S. would oppose NATO membership of Ukraine... Cut off arms shipments to Ukraine... Undermine the partnership with Europe... Discredit Zelensky on the international stage.

"If he was a Russian asset, I can’t imagine him doing anything more favourable than these things.”

Russia's election interference

A review of recent history reveals no one should be surprised by where we've arrived.

In early 2017, American intelligence agencies concluded that Putin had ordered a massive effort to sabotage the 2016 American election. They found that Putin wanted to damage the faith that Americans have in their own elections and undermine the U.S. led "liberal world order" that Russia viewed as a threat to their own security. To do that Russia worked to help get Trump elected.

Trump has insisted it was all a "phony witch hunt." There was no sabotage. "Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me."

That’s one way to put it. Evidence of Russian government operations in the U.S. began to surface in mid-2016 when the Democratic National Committee and its cyber response team publicly announced that Russian hackers had compromised the DNC computer network. Hacked material attributed to the Russian government was released in June and continued into the fall.

The FBI began investigating. By fall, two federal agencies jointly announced that the Russian government "directed recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including U.S. political organizations." The thefts and disclosures were "intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

In early 2017, several Congressional investigations were underway. Then, in May of that year, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel by the U.S. deputy attorney general to lead an investigation into the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The resulting redacted Mueller report, published nearly two years later, concludes: "The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion."

Soon after WikiLeaks’s first release of stolen documents in late July 2016, a foreign government contacted the FBI about a May 2016 encounter with Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos.

"Papadopoulos had suggested to a representative of that foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton." That triggered the FBI’s investigation.

Mueller’s investigation determined the Russian intelligence service GRU hacked into the computers of employees and volunteers working on the Clinton campaign, and then released the stolen documents under the fictitious online personas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0". Additional materials were released by GRU through WikiLeaks. Trump reacted by proclaiming he hoped Russia would recover missing emails from a private server used by Clinton when she was secretary of state.

Less than an hour after the media released a graphic video of Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals, Wikileaks made a second release of thousands of Clinton Campaign worker John Podesta’s emails that had been stolen by GRU in late March 2016.

The Mueller probe also established that a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favoured Donald Trump and disparaged Hilary Clinton. The operations were directed at large U.S. audiences and were intended to sow discord in U.S. politics. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists. Facebook estimated that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) may have reached 126 million people through its accounts. Dozens of U.S. rallies that supported Trump and opposed Clinton were also organized by the IRA.

The Mueller report showed there were numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Trump's supporters claimed vindication because the investigation did not conclusively establish that members of the campaign "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

But there was an important caveat. The report noted: "A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts."

A 'back door' to control Ukraine

So how closely did Trump and his people dance with Putin and his network?

The Russian interference operation was carried out by the IRA based in St. Petersburg. It received funding from Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch who led the Wagner mercenary group that fought in Ukraine, using Russian prison inmates recruited for frontline combat. Prigozhin was a close confidant of Putin — or at least he was until his private plane was shot down by Russian air defences in August 2023, only two months after the mercenary led an aborted revolt against Putin in June 2023. Former CIA director William J. Burns commented, "Revenge is a dish Putin prefers served cold."

In April 2016, says the Mueller report, a U.S. congressional delegation in Moscow was approached with an offer of "confidential information" from the Prosecutor General of Russia about "interactions between certain political forces in our two countries."

In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. received an email about an offer to provide the Trump campaign with official documents and information "that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."

Donald Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically to the email. “If it’s what you say I love it…"

This email led to the infamous meeting at the Trump Tower organized by Donald Trump Jr., where senior members of the Trump campaign met with a Russian attorney, "expecting to receive derogatory information about Hilary Clinton from the Russian government," as the Mueller report puts it.

Attending the meeting were Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, senior advisor Jared Kushner, Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump. Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had worked for the Russian government and was close to the government at the time, spoke at the meeting.

A week after the June 9, 2016 meeting, a cybersecurity firm and the DNC announced the Russian GRU hack and dump of the DNC documents.

In July 2016, an event called Global Partners in Diplomacy was sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Eighty foreign ambassadors attended, including Ambassador Kislyak of Russia. JD Gordon, a senior campaign advisor for Trump, gave a speech in which he stated the U.S. should have better relations with Russia. After the speech Gordon shook hands with Kislyak, whom he assessed to be an "old school KGB guy," and reiterated what he had said about improving relations with Russia. At a reception later that evening, the two men dined together. Trump campaign advisor Carter Page joined them at the table.

Then an odd development. In preparation for the Republican National Convention, the Republican party platform was toned down to reflect Trump’s views on Russia. No longer did the platform identify Russia as the country’s "number one threat."

At a campaign foreign policy meeting on March 31, 2016, Trump’s stated position on Ukraine was that the Europeans should take primary responsibility for any assistance to Ukraine, and there should be improved U.S.-Russia relations. Trump had said that he did not want to start World War Three over that region. In the platform, a reference to providing Ukraine with "lethal defence weapons" was replaced with "appropriate assistance."

Paul Manafort served on the Trump campaign from March to August 2016, including a period as campaign chairman. One who recommended him for a position on the campaign was Roger Stone.

Stone had worked with Manafort from 1980 to the mid-1990s at various consulting and lobbying firms. Manafort met Trump in 1982, and they saw each other at political and social events in New York and at Stone’s wedding. Manafort travelled to Mar-a-Lago in March 2016, and Trump hired him. He worked without pay even though he had no meaningful income at the time.

From 2005 to 2009, Manafort himself had worked for a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who was closely aligned with Putin. Manafort had also served as political consultant to a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine from 2005 to 2015.

Manafort instructed his deputy on the Trump campaign, Rick Gates, to provide another longtime Manafort employee, assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence, with updates on the Trump campaign, "including internal polling data." Manafort expected the polling data to be shared with others in Ukraine and the Russian oligarch. The polling data was sent by WhatsApp and then deleted.

On Tuesday August 2, 2016, Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate, met for dinner in New York at the Grand Havana Club. Kilimnik had been in Moscow from July 28 to 31 and had sent Manafort a coded message asking for a meeting.

Manafort and Kilimnik discussed a plan to create an autonomous republic in the eastern region of Donbas in Ukraine. Pro-Russian Ukrainian military forces, backed by the Russian military, had occupied the region since 2014, when the pro-Russian president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych was removed from power during popular protests. He fled to Russia. It was noted that the support of both the U.S. and Russian presidents would be necessary for the plan to work.

Manafort later acknowledged the plan would be a "backdoor" means for Russia to control Ukraine.

Manafort initially said that if he had not cut off the the discussion, Kilimnik, a Russian national with close ties to Yanukovych, would have asked him to convince Trump to come out in favour of this "peace plan." Tellingly, that is exactly the plan Trump is now endorsing.

The two men also discussed the Trump candidacy, including campaign messaging and internal polling. They talked about battleground states, identified by Manafort as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota. Two weeks after the Aug. 2 meeting, Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign amid negative media reports of Manafort's work for the pro-Russian Party of Regions in Ukraine.

Despite the resignation, Manafort continued to offer advice to various campaign officials. He told Gates, his former second in command, that "he still spoke with Kushner, Bannon, and candidate Trump." He emailed Kushner on Oct. 21, 2016 that the campaign should make the case against Clinton "as the failed and corrupt champion of the establishment." And he suggested that WikiLeaks provided the ability to make the case in her own words and those of her officials.

Manafort was concerned Clinton would respond to a loss by claiming voter fraud and cyber fraud, "including the claim that the Russians have hacked into the voting machines and tampered with the results."

On December 8, Kilimnik wrote to Manafort about the "peace plan." He said: "All that is required to start the process is a very minor 'wink' (or slight push from DT)." Within a few months of his inauguration, "DT could have peace in Ukraine."

It is not known if the peace plan was passed on to the Trump campaign by Manafort.

Immediately after the election, individuals connected to the Russian government started contacting officials on the Trump team through multiple channels. "The most senior levels of the Russian government encouraged these efforts." But Mueller was careful to state that these efforts did not establish constituted coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in its election interference activities.

The morning after the election, Putin sent a message written in English and Russian to the president’s campaign secretary Hope Hicks offering congratulations. He said he "looked forward to working with [Trump] on leading Russian-American relations out of crisis."

The Mueller report said "the investigation established multiple links between Trump campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away. Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”

"The office determined that certain individuals associated with the Campaign lied to investigators about campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation." Some people connected to the campaign were charged with making false statements and obstructing justice.

And the president? Mueller offered a monumental qualification: "If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgement... while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

In a written response to questions from Mueller, Trump exhibited a very poor memory of campaign events: I do not recall, I have no recollection, I had no knowledge, I do not remember.

It is obviously very difficult to investigate a sitting president. Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Rod Rosenstein made the determination not to prosecute the President on obstruction.

'A very cunning person'

And so back to the strange bromance between the American president and Russia’s dictator. Trump called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine "genius" and "savvy." He has repeatedly praised Putin as "a very smart guy" and "a very cunning person." The two spoke by phone on February 12, 2025. After that talk, Trump said he believed Putin wanted peace and would "keep his word" if a peace deal is reached in Ukraine.

But Putin had already violated two cease-fire deals negotiated in Belarus in 2014 and 2015. President Zelensky believes that Putin cannot be trusted to uphold a ceasefire, and pressed for security guarantees from the U.S. to defer future attacks.

At peace talks in Saudi Arabia on Feb. 19, 2025, Trump made it clear that Russia would no longer be isolated. He even suggested that Ukraine was to blame for the war, because they had not agreed to give up territory. To Zelensky, he falsely asserted: "You should never have started it." Trump has praised Putin and scorned the leaders of U.S. traditional allies like Germany, Canada and France. America appears to be switching sides in more than just the Ukraine War.

Trump has falsely claimed that the U.S. contributed $350 billion in aid to Ukraine, ostensibly to justify his demand that Ukraine repay American support back with $500 billion worth of rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine.

The real numbers? The Kiel Institute for the World Economy said Europe contributed $138 billion in aid to Ukraine, compared to $119 billion from the U.S. Most of the U.S. money was spent in the U.S. Europe gave its support as a grant; Trump considers American aid a loan.

It was while Trump shouted at the Ukrainian leader during their famous Oval Office clash that he said Putin has "been through a lot with me."

When Zelensky said the U.S. could feel threatened by Russia one day despite having a "nice ocean" between them, Trump erupted, saying, "You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now." To which Zelensky replied, "I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m the president in a war."

The confrontation received praise from Russia. Dmitri A. Medvedev, a top Putin lieutenant, posted on X: "The insolent pig finally got a proper slap down in the Oval Office."

Zelensky later called the meeting "regrettable."

There in the room to witness the debacle, even though he was not on the list of approved journalists, was a reporter from Russian state-owned media, TASS. But venerable news syndicates Associate Press and Reuters were barred from attending. That’s because Trump’s White House has overturned a protocol in place for decades. No longer does the Correspondents’ Association determine who has press access to White House briefings. Trump controls that decision now, and his priorities are clear.

The elevation of a TASS emissary over traditional western news media reminded people of an incident during Trump’s first administration in 2017. At that time, a TASS photographer was invited to cover a meeting between Donald Trump and Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. U.S. reporters were barred from photographing the sit-down meeting.

Trump’s Feb. 28 betrayal of Zelensky and his embattled nation came just days after the U.S. sided with Russia in opposition to a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Although European leaders have remained unwavering in their support of Ukraine, there has been one exception.

Last year, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, poster boy for the far-right and close Trump ally, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago three times and made an unannounced visit to Moscow to meet with President Putin.

Hours after Trump’s blindside bullying of Zelensky on Feb. 28, Orban bucked the views of his fellow European leaders by posting on X: "Strong men make peace, weak men make war. Today President (Trump) stood bravely for peace. Even if it was difficult for many to digest. Thank you, Mr. President!"

Can it be a coincidence that Trump has gutted pro-democracy programs in Hungary, a country that Russia is trying to bring into its sphere of influence, despite it being in the European Union?

According to Calder Walton of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Trump is delivering wins for Putin. "He is getting more than he and other former KGB officers ever dreamed of." An expert in the history of espionage between Russia and U.S., Walton believes we are witnessing "a dismantling before our eyes of the U.S.-led international order, something that Putin has worked toward his entire career."

The Russians watch and celebrate. After the Oval Office blow up with Zelensky, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, went on Russian state television and praised Trump. The new White House agenda, he said, "largely aligns with our vision."

Canada’s new prime minister on Saturday drew the contours of a different alignment. After speaking with Zelensky on the phone, Mark Carney posted on social media that "Canada is Ukraine’s steadfast ally. We will make sure Ukraine has the military support it needs to defend itself — now and into the future."

The PM made it clear that Canada supported the proposed immediate ceasefire agreed to on March 11 in Saudi Arabia. "Now, Russia must stop stalling and launching its attacks." And Canada would continue to do its part to maintain sanctions against Russia.

Global relations are based on earned trust and assessed risk. In a world turned upside down by Donald Trump, knowing who we can depend upon when meshing our economies, militaries and intelligence will be a paramount question for whoever leads the next government.

And that raises the unimaginable question. Is the president of the United States still the leader of the free world? Or a tawdry puppet whose strings are being pulled from far away in the Kremlin?

Canada's strategy for survival in a brave new world may hinge on the answer.