Only a week has passed since Donald Trump’s election victory, and Russian President Vladimir Putin – one of the strong leaders Trump most admires – is already messing with his head.

First, Putin waited two days before congratulating Trump on his victory. You can imagine Trump getting calls from arrogant leaders around the world – Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, the head of NATO, the European heads of state – all the while wondering about the man he publicly admires. and privately during the past eight years: When is Vladimir going to call?

Then, in response to Trump’s claim that he asked during their phone call: warned– To prevent Putin from escalating the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman denied that the two had spoken on the phone at all. (Putin delivered his belated congratulations at a news conference.)

I don’t know who is telling the truth, a practice for which neither man has a good reputation. But anyway, in the next few weeks, when Putin orders 50,000 new recruits (including 10,000 imported North Korean soldiers) to carry out the next rampage: expel Ukrainian soldiers from the thin sliver of Russian territory they hold , and then retake ground across the border in Donbas province – he can tell a complaining Trump that he cannot remember such a conversation. If Trump thinks Putin will actually refrain from stepping up attacks on Ukraine as a friendly favor… well, maybe our future president will learn a lesson about the limits of personal relationships early in his second term, in the light of perceived national interests. .

The latest twist in this saga came on Monday when Russia’s intelligence chief, Nikolai Patrushev, made the following comment in an interview with the Moscow newspaper Kommersant:

The election campaign is over. To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person he will be obliged to fulfill them.

This is an astonishing piece of psychological warfare! The Russians are essentially saying to Trump: We put you in the office. Now it’s time for you to pay us back.

Did this make Trump wonder: WTF?

It is established that Russians created and distributed fake videos aimed at luring voters away from Vice President Kamala Harris toward the end of this year’s presidential election. One such video claimed that illegal Haitian immigrants were voting. (The FBI, the director of national intelligence and the top cybersecurity agency issued a rare joint statement on that claim, warning that these videos were fake and of Russian origin.) Russians also called bomb threats to polling places in black neighborhoods that are often Favoring Democratic candidates.

However, there is no evidence – and no one has alleged it – that Trump or his campaign staffers conspired or knew anything about these videos or the bomb threats. If Trump had any involvement, or if Russia has any other form of involvement kompromat (compromising material) about Trump, Patrushev’s message constitutes an extremely powerful threat of blackmail, delivered in public, against a newly elected American president.

If Trump had had no involvement whatsoever in this escapade, Patrushev’s move shows – some would say: confirms– that Russia’s main goal, in all these disinformation ventures, is to sow chaos, breed distrust and weaken the nerves of democracy in Western countries, especially in the US, regardless of who is president.

What Trump is doing with this campaign – whether he is fully aware of its scope and depth – is still unknown. His foreign policy, which he has clearly expressed many times, is aimed at realignment with Putin’s Russia. At an initial press conference in Helsinki, he said he believed Putin over his own intelligence services when it came to whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election. More generally, Trump abhors multinational alliances, especially NATO. He views US military aid to Ukraine as a waste of money; he doesn’t think much of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, labeling him a “salesman,” and no doubt remains bitter about the role their “beautiful phone call” played in his first impeachment trial. (This was the call where Trump tried to hold up the delivery of US anti-tank missiles until Zelensky agreed to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden.)

The entire MAGA wing of the Republican Party – that is, the Republican Party – endorses Trump’s desire to renew good relations with Russia, the better to go after America’s real opponent, Xi Jinping’s China. The first few nominees for Trump’s Cabinet – Rep. Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, and Representative Elise Stefanik all share this perspective. Shortly after his victory, Trump made a point of tweeting that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, both of whom had lobbied for high positions, would have no place in his administration. Haley committed the unforgivable sin of running against Trump during the primaries, but in addition, both she and Pompeo supported — and still support — boosting military aid to Ukraine. So they were gone.

One can only wonder what Trump will do – whether he will change his position, whether he will be able to change his position – when he realizes: as he realizes that Putin is not his friend. Trump certainly shouldn’t pretend that he is is.

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