Europe must try to make Donald Trump's favours for Vladimir Putin a US election issue

All smiles as Donald Trump greets Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, ahead of a meeting last year. Picture: Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

In 2017, a dossier compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele – detailing uncorroborated intelligence reports suggesting Vladimir Putin had compromising information about Donald Trump based on business trips he made to Russia before he became US president – was made public. Trump denied the claims.

In 2019, an investigation by US special counsel Robert Mueller concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election in an attempt to help Trump, engaging in “information warfare” and hacking Democratic websites. It also found “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign”.

Trump dismissed Mueller as a “true never Trumper”, writing on social media that he had “nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected”, but also later saying “Russia had nothing to do with it at all”.

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Not on Ukraine’s side

Since his re-election as president, Trump has upbraided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a stormy White House meeting; called him “a dictator”; parroted false Russian propaganda that Ukraine started the war; and cut US financial aid to Kyiv.

Now he has made a deal to buy Russian diesel and blocked new sanctions on Putin’s regime passed by Congress. His government also seems to have restricted the Ukrainian military’s access to the Starlink internet system, damaging its ability to intercept Russian missiles, and may have stopped sharing intelligence.

So it was understandable that, in a recent interview, Zelensky said: “It's painful when President Trump chooses one ‌side, not our ⁠side.” However, if Trump really has decided to pick Putin’s side, there’s still a chance for European leaders to alter his thinking.

READ MORE: UK stands in solidarity with Zelensky after Trump calls for a new Ukrainian president

Persuading Trump to back down

With less than three weeks until the US midterm elections, Trump’s Republicans are doing badly. While the party has what former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney calls a “Putin wing”, most Americans still regard Russia as a hostile state and Europe’s democracies as their allies.

If Andy Burnham and co can find diplomatic ways to highlight the fundamental shift in historic alliances that Trump’s actions suggest may be underway, it would give the American people another reason to move away from him.

Trump may care little for Ukraine, Europe or democracy, but he does care about his popularity ratings. If this issue starts damaging them, he might back down. And if the Democrats take control of Congress, Trump will almost certainly find his closeness to Putin under the kind of extreme scrutiny that dissuades him from doing even more favours for the evil, bloodthirsty, warmongering tyrant.