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The United States may have defeated Russia in the Cold War and has since viewed Moscow as nothing more than a provocation, albeit one with nuclear weapons, and has been desperate to focus on the competition for influence with the new superpower China.
But Russia and its leader, whom US President Joe Biden called a “crazy son of a bitch” at a fundraiser on Wednesday, aren’t about to back down.
Putin has focused the malice of his intelligence agencies, military might, global diplomacy, and obstructionist statesmanship into a multi-front assault on American power both in the United States itself and abroad.
He has gained enormous influence at the very center of US politics, masterfully demonstrating how to infiltrate and exploit America’s political divisions. A former KGB lieutenant colonel, embittered as he watched the collapse of the Soviet Union from his post in East Germany, wreaks havoc to discredit and weaken the United States. Successive US presidents have underestimated Russia, misunderstood its historic humiliations, and struggled to figure out how to reverse Putin’s course and contain the threat he poses.
Western observers often emphasize that V. Putin’s leadership of Russia was a disaster. As oligarchs looted natural resources, Russia was hit by international sanctions, democracy was stifled, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in its wars.
But Putin has been remarkably resilient after earlier signs that his invasion of Ukraine, launched nearly two years ago, was a disaster and could lead to the downfall of his regime. There are now signs that the rebuilding of Russia’s armed forces and its willingness to take horrendous losses is changing the course of the war and raising the prospect of a victory that would make Putin a far greater threat.
Meanwhile, the Russian leader’s use of leverage and successful intrusion into US politics threatens to create a rift between the US and its European NATO allies that could endanger the post-World War II security architecture.
The ways in which Putin plays in US politics
V. Putin defends Russia’s interests against the United States on several fronts.
Another U.S. election appears to be falling victim to Russian meddling after news emerged that prosecutors charged longtime FBI informant Alexander Smirnov with “actively spreading new lies that could affect the U.S. election.” in 2016 US intelligence agencies have assessed that Moscow interfered in the election to help Trump.
Smirnov, who was charged last week with fabricating evidence related to Biden family corruption in Ukraine, told investigators after his arrest that the material came from Russian intelligence, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday. The development marks another attempt by Russia to undermine Trump’s main election opponent.
House Republicans once viewed Mr. Smirnov’s claims as a key part of their drive to impeach Mr. Biden. Now that they’ve been discredited, they claim it didn’t matter. However, V. Putin cannot lose. Republicans are seeking to further discredit the FBI, the agency responsible for hunting down Russian spies.
Even if the credibility of the Republican impeachment plans has been destroyed, it may already be in Russia’s interest to foment more discord in Washington. “I think this is another great success of Russian intelligence in interfering with our election,” Douglas London, the CIA’s former head of counterintelligence in South and Southwest Asia, told CNN.
Even the death in prison of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last week opened up new heated divisions in US politics. She again focused on Trump’s strange refusal to ever criticize Putin. And the fact that D. Trump compared the persecution of A. Navalny to his own legal situation is not only “disgusting”, but also damages the reputation and integrity of the US political and judicial institutions, which V. Putin loves very much, according to CNN.
That will put Russia back at the epicenter of the US election campaign, which is sure to deepen the national political divide as Mr Biden castigates Mr Trump over his relationship with Mr Putin. “It’s embarrassing. It’s weak. It is dangerous. It’s un-American,” Mr. Biden said last week.
Whatever happens next, Russia will be central to Mr. Biden’s legacy. Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in February prompted the US president to activate NATO and send billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition to keep Ukraine off the map. In addition, Mr. Biden brings two new members to the alliance, Sweden and Finland, further weakening Russia’s strategic position.
The most puzzling recent transformation, according to CNN, is the Republican Party that praised President Ronald Reagan, urged former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Berlin to “tear down this wall” and is now paving the way for Russian expansion.
Refusal of House Republicans to pass new $60 billion dollar aid package for Ukraine is determined by the victories of Moscow’s forces on the battlefield. And Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, is vowing to end the war quickly if elected for another term, likely to pay back Putin for the illegal invasion and seizure of territory in Europe’s biggest land conflict since the end of World War II. .
Meanwhile, Trump’s warning that he would call on Russia to invade NATO allies that have failed to meet defense spending targets has rattled the Western alliance and cast doubt on its foundational mutual defense commitments. If Trump wins a second term and pulls out of NATO, he would hand Putin Russia’s biggest strategic victory since the Cold War.
Russia’s ability to instill fear and recrimination in Washington was on display again last week, when House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner sparked alarm by revealing Moscow’s alleged plan to develop a nuclear space weapon that could potentially cripple dozens of commercial and government satellites.
On Wednesday, it became clear that another American citizen is imprisoned in Russia. Moscow usually tries to use the captives as bargaining chips for Russian criminals and intelligence agents held abroad. Ksenia Karelin, a dual citizen of the United States and Russia, has been arrested on treason charges for allegedly donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity, her employer in California said.
Other Americans imprisoned in Russia: former US Marine Paul Whelan, who has been held for more than five years and denies espionage charges, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested last year on espionage charges that he and his employer strongly deny. Their tests are a convenient way for Mr. Putin to increase political pressure on Mr. Biden whenever he likes.
Geopolitically, Russia is increasingly finding common interests and military synergies with other US adversaries such as China, North Korea, and Iran. The cooperation of the latter is far from the official alliance that Washington has long feared. But this united front of autocracies seeks to challenge US global power. By the way, V. Putin recently formalized his warming relations with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un by gifting him a new limousine.
Mr. Biden once tried to save relations between the United States and Russia
Mr. Biden is just the latest president to suffer a national security migraine from Mr. Putin.
However, this was not always the case. At the beginning of his term, V. Putin sought cooperation. He was one of the first world leaders to call President George W. Bush after 2001. September 11 attacks. GW Bush once famously looked Putin in the eye and said he “felt his soul” – one of the many catastrophic events of the 21st century. presidents’ wrong assessments of the Russian leader.
President Barack Obama tried to “reset” relations with Moscow. However, after a period as prime minister, Putin returned to the presidency and became increasingly hostile to the West. The Russian leader was particularly enraged by the US-led operation, which in 2011 Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown. Now Obama’s critics say he underreacted to Putin’s 2014 Ukraine’s annexation of Crimea and set the stage for Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago.
Trump came to power amid allegations that his team colluded with Russia to undermine the 2016 election. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. But the special counsel detailed numerous contacts between them and wrote that the Trump campaign believed it would benefit from information stolen and released by the Russians. Whether Russia helped Trump win is impossible to say. But the fallout left the new president permanently irritated by the US intelligence agencies, which he saw as a hostile “deep state,” and led him to burnish their credibility among millions of his supporters.
This incitement of domestic hostility and damage to US institutions is consistent with Russia’s goals. And the spectacle of Trump, as president, siding with Putin at the Helsinki summit and belittling US intelligence agencies over their claims of election meddling remains one of the most stunning moments in the history of US-Russian relations.
After taking office, Mr. Biden initially tried to take steps to reduce the poison of relations with Moscow, meeting with Mr. Putin in Geneva in a repeat of the old Cold War summit. Deeply skeptical of the talks, Mr. Biden has sought to halt Russian cyber security attacks and restart nuclear disarmament talks while trying to reduce the risk of accidental war.
“We will know in the next six months or a year whether or not we actually have a meaningful strategic dialogue,” Mr. Biden said after the meeting in 2021. in June.
His answer came just over six months after Putin invaded sovereign, democratic neighboring Ukraine, effectively starting a proxy war between Mr. Biden and the Kremlin chief, who has said he sees the conflict as part of a broader showdown with the United States and the West. part of
Since then, Putin’s efforts to weaken the power of the United States have only intensified.
The use of Russian spy agencies to inject propaganda and discord into US politics through social media and directly through the intelligence agencies was described by Mueller in the final report as an effort “intended to provoke and intensify political and social discord in the United States.”
Ironically, this effort leverages two of America’s greatest innovations—its open, confrontational, democratic political system and computer technology and the Internet.
And as recent days have shown, the Russian leader can always count on one invaluable resource: the reflex of American politicians to turn on each other in a way that makes his threat even stronger.
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