For decades, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dreamed of the collapse of the European Union and its estrangement from the United States. The classic divide and conquer. However, the enormous shift taken by Donald Trump’s government in its foreign policy, concretized in black and white in the new national security strategy announced last Friday, has exceeded the latter’s most optimistic wishes. For the first time, an American administration places the community bloc, and not Russia, as its main adversary on the Old Continent. And, icing on the cake, Washington warned its former allies that it planned to withdraw its defenses from Eastern countries in 2027, according to Reuters. The Kremlin is now calculating the window of opportunity that Trump gives it for its projects in Eastern Europe as long as he remains in power.
“There are concerns about a change in the US national strategy under other future administrations, but the current approach is attractive for Russia,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
In an interview this weekend, the spokesperson praised Trump’s new foreign policy: “It is largely consistent with our vision and is perhaps a modest assurance that, at a minimum, we can constructively continue our work together to find a peaceful solution in Ukraine.”
While the Kremlin considered it “positive” that the White House stopped considering it as “an adversary”, the vice-president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, and the tycoon Elon Musk, former right-hand man of Trump, expressed on the social network X the harmony found by the two powers with their common hatred towards Europe.
“The European Union should be abolished and its sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” Musk said. “Exactly,” the former Russian president argued.
Medvedev also highlighted on his social networks “the high-powered pragmatism of the current MAGA team (Make America Great Againmotto of Trumpism) » « The Americans continue to tame the crazy European Union. Naturally, so that the sick animal remembers who the real master of the circus is,” he added.
Negotiations between the United States and Russia over Ukraine are not limited to this war alone. Moscow included in its negotiations with Washington, before launching its invasion in 2022 and this year, the departure of the contingents of the Atlantic Alliance and its defense systems from all the countries that joined NATO after 1997. That is to say, by replacing its shield up to the German border and leaving in uncertainty the Baltic countries, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Finland, among others.
The White House document openly talks about supporting ultranationalist political parties opposed to the European bloc and proposes restoring strategic balance with Moscow to “prevent the escalation or unintentional expansion of the war.” Under the plan, Washington must offer a “major diplomatic engagement” to Moscow, while Europe “must stand on its own two feet and act as a group of united sovereign states taking responsibility for its own defense.”
Putin warned last week that “if the European Union wants it, Russia is ready (for war) right now.” In fact, on those same days, the Pentagon warned senior European officials that the bloc “will have to assume the majority of NATO’s conventional defensive capabilities on its territory from 2027”, according to five different sources reported to Reuters.
The warning took European leaders by surprise, who say the deadline is unsustainable, even though Trump had given signs that withdrawing military support from Europe was one of his plans since his first term last decade.
In Russia, they say Trump’s plan opens up new opportunities in what Moscow considers its zones of influence, from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
“The departure of constable “This will create an area of uncertainty: the weakening of the transatlantic link could destabilize key regions for Russia, increasing the risk of local conflicts,” writes military blogger Semion Pegov, author of the War Gonzo channel, linked to Russian special services. “In this situation, success will depend on adapting to a system (…) where alliances are conditional and situational.”
That is to say a scenario in which small countries would be more defenseless if the European Union ceased to be a compact bloc and if the United States considered that this conflict is not their problem.
The Kremlin benefits from the support of the European Union to implement this strategy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Putin’s main ally within the bloc, went further than Moscow and called Ukraine’s possible membership of the European Union a justification for Russia to launch an attack.
“Brussels is preparing for a war with Russia and already has a date to enter it: 2030. The objective of the arms program launched by Brussels is to prepare the Union for a war in 2030. And 2030 is also the deadline for Ukraine’s accelerated accession to the European Union,” Orbán wrote on his social networks.
Regardless, Russian officials are being cautious because Trump, whose popularity is at its lowest since he was elected president a year ago, still faces midterm elections next year and Moscow’s plans span several years.
The Kremlin, in any case, is betting on Trump, and Putin’s spokesperson has promoted a conspiracy theory to defend the president and stir up public opinion. According to Peskov, the US leader could see his plans altered “by what they call the deep state”, an alleged shadow network that controls the strings of power.
Some Russian analysts are more realistic. “The whole document coincides with Trump’s ideology. This means that if the Democrats come to power, they will cancel everything at once,” warned Sergei Markov, Putin’s former foreign policy advisor, on his social networks.
The expert emphasizes that the United States can become “a potential ally” of Russia “against the globalists”, although for the moment, on the international scene, Moscow “must be more of a friend of China” because the United States will focus all its attention on the Pacific. “Europe must defend itself. Hmm… Well, now the Europeans will hurry even more to restore their war industry and introduce universal conscription,” he predicts.
Markov.
Trump’s approach also raises suspicion among Russian nationalists. After decades in which the Kremlin presented the United States as its great enemy and Putin himself accused the Americans of lying to Moscow about NATO, his new ventures worry advocates of the war against Ukraine.
“I am concerned about two questions (about this rapprochement),” raises a well-known war correspondent, Alexander Sladkov, on his Telegram channel. “Where will Europe be at that time and the main thing: how can we forget that these American bastards are guilty of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians? Yes, we must develop and grow, but let us never forget that.”
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