“Ukraine, please note, is no longer Ukraine,” he said in a recent podcast.
For his part, Vladimir Putin judged that his relationship with the United States would depend on their attitude after the election, while welcoming the “sincerity” of the Republican candidate for his desire to establish peace in Ukraine.
In his book “War,” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward writes that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have spoken seven times since he left the White House in 2021.
The Kremlin denied this.
But Donald Trump maintains doubt: “I don’t comment but I would tell you that, if I had done so, it would have been intelligent,” he assured in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
“If I’m friends with people, if I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing for the country. He has 2,000 nuclear weapons and so do we,” he added.
“Number of restrictions”
Vladimir Putin has never publicly supported Donald Trump, even saying, admittedly in a sarcastic manner, leaning towards the candidacy of Joe Biden and, since his withdrawal, of his vice-president Kamala Harris.
“I have already said that our favorite, if you can put it that way, was the current president, Mr. Biden. He withdrew from the race, but he urged his supporters to support Ms. Harris. We will do the same, we will support it,” the Russian leader quipped on September 5 during a forum.
Donald Trump introduced “so many more restrictions and sanctions against Russia” than any “president before him,” he explained. “Perhaps she will refrain from such actions.”
Under President Trump, the United States has taken a hard line toward Moscow.
This did not prevent Donald Trump from saying that he believed Vladimir Putin, during a memorable meeting in 2018 in Helsinki with the Russian leader, when the latter assured that Russia had not interfered in the presidential election of 2016, despite the own statements of American intelligence services.
“Man to man”
For Russian political scientist Konstantin Kalachov, “it is clear that Trump’s candidacy is better for Russia,” especially if “Russia wants a quick deal” in Ukraine, while the Biden administration leads a coalition of countries in support of kyiv.
If, on the contrary, Moscow wishes to drag out the war in order to bleed Ukraine, “then with Harris it will be easier” because it is “unlikely that she will be more determined than Joe Biden”, explains Mr. Kalashov to the ‘AFP.
The fact remains that “with Trump, it is both easier and more complicated because (…) he is unpredictable,” he adds.
Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute, a research center in Washington, expects, if Donald Trump wins, that he will seek a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin, “one-on-one -head, from man to man.”
