The combat zone

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : In Trump, his famed unpredictability notwithstanding, Putin might well judge he has finally found an American president who shares his belief that the world should, once again, be divided into spheres of influence, with Russia granted the status of an unquestionable great power and able to renegotiate Europe's security architecture.
51% : Perhaps he can already imagine the prospect of sitting down with Trump, Xi, and, say, Emmanuel Macron representing Europe, to carve up the globe in a Yalta 2.0.
48% : Putin will almost certainly retaliate, but he will weigh his decision carefully, mindful of the imminent return of Trump to the White House.
48% : (The idea might appeal to Trump, too.)
46% : Better yet, Putin may now believe the resurgence of Trump offers him more than just the opportunity to end the war in Ukraine on his terms.
42% : Trump mulled whether to leave Nato on several occasions during his last term, according to those who served under him.
40% : Europe and Ukraine must brace for a future in which American support can no longer be assured, and a new world order whose contours may well be determined by the burgeoning relationship between Putin and Trump.
37% : At the start of Biden's presidency in 2021, he toured the globe assuring US allies that Trump had been an aberration, repeating mantra-like: "America is back."
19% : More importantly, from Putin's perspective, Trump has vowed to take a wrecking ball to the old liberal international order, that Russia (and China) have long hoped to see overturned.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.