By Michael McFaul
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Donald Trump has never hidden his admiration for Russia’s
imperial dictator, Vladimir Putin. Shortly after taking office for his first
term in 2017, President Trump was asked by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly to
defend his respect for Putin, whom O’Reilly called a “killer.” Trump replied, “We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our
country’s so innocent?” The following year, at a press conference in Helsinki
during his first summit with Putin, Trump publicly questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment
that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The Russian
leader was standing right by his side.
These expressions of affinity for Putin were shocking at
the time, but crucially, they did not produce consequential shifts in U.S.
foreign policy. The first Trump administration included many senior national
security officials who had a different, more accurate assessment of how Putin’s
policies threatened American national interests. Trump’s own 2017 National
Security Strategy identified Russia (and China) as revisionist powers that “challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting
to erode American security and prosperity.” Reluctantly, in 2017, Trump
also signed a new sanctions law, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through
Sanctions Act, that focused on Russia and other adversaries. His first
administration even provided a limited number of anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine. The gap between
Trump’s friendly rhetoric toward Putin and actual policy was real.
Not anymore. No longer constrained by Gens. H.R. McMaster
or Jim Mattis, Trump has gradually but consistently turned his effusive
admiration for Putin into the most radical shift in American foreign policy in
the last century—and maybe ever. Today, under Trump, the United States—a
country that once was considered the leader of the free world—is now openly and
shamelessly supporting an imperial dictatorship in Russia.
This tragic pivot started slowly after Trump returned to
the White House for a second term. As a presidential candidate in 2024, Trump
had claimed he could end the war in Ukraine in one day. Once back in power, he
and his team seemed to be trying to mediate an end to the fighting. I applauded
these efforts at the time. Putin’s barbaric invasion has killed too many
people: soldiers and civilians in Ukraine, but also scores of young Russian
men, many sent to the front only to become casualties within days and sometimes
even hours of their arrival. Russia is losing on the frontline. Ukrainian
warriors have stopped the advance of Russia’s invading army and have recently
begun taking back chunks of occupied territory. So, Putin has changed tactics,
focusing instead on expanding an intensified campaign of attacks against
civilians and civilian infrastructure. His military now targets Ukrainian
civilians on a near-daily basis, while seeking to eliminate their energy and
water infrastructure to heighten their suffering during the winter. This
terrorism is motivated by the inaccurate belief that a traumatized Ukrainian
society would pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to capitulate. Who could
not support ending such a war?
I cannot say for sure if Trump genuinely was trying to
end the war, or whether his desire to improve relations with Putin and do
business deals with Russian companies was always the greater priority. What I
can say is that his approach to negotiations has been fundamentally flawed and
ineffective. Trump and his negotiators—real estate businessmen Steve Witkoff
and Jared Kushner—decided early on that they would give concessions to Putin in
the hope that he would stop fighting. For instance, while still allowing
American companies to sell arms to Europeans who then transfer them to Ukraine,
Trump has ended direct military and economic assistance to Kyiv. Trump has also
made it clear that Ukraine could not join NATO while he was president, and he
consistently ridicules Zelensky and berates him for not wanting peace. The
latter is a talking point Kremlin propagandists could have written. Conversely,
Trump hosted Putin for a summit in Alaska in August 2025, personally greeting
him on the tarmac with a red-carpet welcome. But none of Trump’s gifts to Putin
have produced even a small change in Putin’s commitment to continue his war.
This month, Trump’s pivot toward Putin became more
pronounced, with real-world negative consequences for Ukraine. He eased
sanctions on Russian diesel, allowing Moscow to release millions of barrels of
fuel onto the global market. He then signed an executive order waiving most of the new sanctions and
tariffs against Russia under the Lindsey O. Graham Act, two days before they
were to take effect. Then, most damagingly of all, came the restrictions on
SpaceX’s satellite communications service, which Ukraine relies on for
battlefield communications and drone operations. Reuters reported that the order to limit access originated
inside the White House, although it remains unclear who authorized it. Trump
and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have both denied personal responsibility, suggesting
they knew how unpopular this decision would be with the public. But the effect
on Ukrainian air defenses has been serious. As Zelensky put
it: “We couldn’t use a tool that helps protect people. That’s very painful
and frustrating.”
Trump has defended the diesel deal and waiving of sanctions as
necessary to keep Putin at the negotiating table. It’s the same old
playbook—appease Putin and then hope he will kindly end his invasion. It hasn’t
worked before; it isn’t working now. In fact, these new gifts will have the
opposite effect. They will encourage Putin to keep fighting, knowing that if he
does, Trump will offer him still more concessions. And to make things even
worse, we have now learned that Putin has floated the idea to Trump of a meeting among China, Russia,
and the United States to deal with the “Ukraine crisis,” just as imperial
powers used to do in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Thus, the past week has been one of the darkest in the
history of U.S.-Ukraine relations; Trump’s longstanding admiration for Putin
has given way to a radically new American foreign policy that puts the United
States unabashedly on the side of autocratic Russia and tragically against
democratic Ukraine. Trump is finally backing up his words with actions—actions
that are both immoral and contrary to America’s national interests.
Call me old-fashioned or idealistic, but I still believe
that morality should play a role in American foreign policy. Of course,
American presidents and diplomats sometimes must engage with autocrats to
advance U.S. interests. I did as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. But we do not
have to embrace them as friends or allies, especially imperial dictators like
Putin, who uses terrorism and kidnapping as instruments of his war against Ukraine. I do
not want my country helping such an evil leader. I want my country to be
against imperialism and for sovereignty, to stand against dictatorship and for
democracy, to aid those fighting for independence and against occupation.
But it’s not just the right thing to do; it’s also the
pragmatic thing to do. Let’s be realistic. Putin is not going to abandon his
autocratic partners in China, Iran, and North Korea just because Trump offers
him concessions. That is a naïve reading of Putin. He sees the United States as
his enemy, no matter how many gifts he gets from Trump.
By trying to appease Putin, Trump is also weakening
America’s relationships with our democratic allies and partners in Europe. In
this new era of great power competition with China and Russia, our democratic
allies are America’s greatest comparative advantage. Together, the free world
has far greater economic power and military strength than autocracies, and our
democratic values and ideals have significantly more global appeal than those
of autocracies. But Trump’s embrace of Putin and his abandonment of Ukraine are
weakening these ties.
And Xi Jinping is watching too. As America proves
feckless in standing with Ukraine, Xi must increasingly believe that Trump will
show similar indifference when it comes to defending Taiwan.
The good news, however, is that the United States is not
a dictatorship. We remain a democracy with competitive elections just around
the corner. Polls show clearly that the American people do not share Trump’s
admiration for Putin. According to the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of Americans have little or
no confidence in Putin “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” A
recent YouGov poll also found that most Americans sympathize with
Ukraine, with just 4 percent saying they sympathize with Russia in the
conflict. Another recent YouGov poll suggests that more Americans want to increase
aid to Ukraine than decrease it. Therefore, I am hoping that early in the new
year, with a new balance of power in Congress and Trump fully into his
lame-duck era, the House of Representatives and Senate will introduce
legislation to provide a new military aid package to Ukraine and another bill
to make any business deal with Russian companies illegal until Putin ends his
war. Dare President Trump to veto them.
In embracing Putin and abandoning Ukrainians, Trump is
out of step with American society. Hopefully, more emboldened and courageous
leadership in the U.S. Congress next year will realign American actions
regarding Putin’s barbaric war in Ukraine with the will of the American people.
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