The Tragic Success of Global Putinism

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : During his first term as president, Trump made his support for Putin, his ideas, and his style of rule explicit.
56% : Right now, the transnational movement of illiberal nationalism is more organized, united, and strategic in its collective actions than the liberal democratic movement.
54% : This is visible in the economic, political, cultural, and educational policies it imposes on other nations.
53% : He began to gradually reassert state control over Russia's economy and media.
51% : Trump sometimes hinted that he agreed.
51% : That puts the onus on those within the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world who still support these ideals to get organized if they are to prevail over Putin's ideology of illiberal nationalism.
49% : They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.
46% : Instead, the concessions are meant to rekindle a personal relationship between Trump and Putin, anchored by a shared ideology.
44% : In 2013, Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage traveled to Moscow, where he gave a speech opposing the adoption of children by same-sex couples -- something Putin sharply limited by law that same year, leading the American conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh to remark on his radio show, "I have to tell you that it freaks me out that Vladimir Putin is saying things I agree with."
44% : It includes (1) intelligence sharing with Ukraine has been discontinued; (2) USAID assistance for Ukraine, including funding to repair its energy grid and for anti-corruption programs, has been discontinued; (3) U.S. funding for Russian civil society and independent media operating in exile has been stopped; (4) diplomatic relations with Moscow have been restored, beginning with a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago; and (5) in radical reversal of past policy, the United States voted with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and a handful of other rogue autocracies against a UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
43% : On this occasion, however, Russia's election observers documented the irregularities, and political opposition leaders mobilized the biggest nationwide demonstration since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
43% : He wants to return to a 19th-century-style world, in which a handful of great powers dominate their spheres of influence unconstrained by multilateral institutions, international laws, or global norms.
41% : They then publicized this content to embarrass the Democratic Party's presidential candidate and help the Republican Party's candidate, Donald Trump.
40% : If the Cold War's central ideological struggle of communism versus capitalism was between states, this new ideological struggle of illiberal nationalism versus liberal internationalism is being fought primarily within states.
40% : Putin's closest ideological ally in Europe is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán -- the only EU leader who did not condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine and who subsequently tried to block EU aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
36% : The United Kingdom's Nigel Farage is a longtime Kremlin favorite thanks to his disdain for the EU; Putin's government supported Farage's Brexit campaign.
36% : " Trump did not succeed in enacting Putin's full ideological agenda during that first term, however.
34% : This time around, however, Trump is no longer constrained by old-school generals trying to slow him down.
33% : Trump has secured nothing for either the United States or Ukraine by playing them.
32% : How else to explain why Trump has delivered to Putin multiple concessions without asking for anything in return?
30% : No European leader has done more to weaken the EU than Orbán, and weakening the EU is precisely what Putin wants.
30% : Read: The simple explanation for why Trump turned against Ukraine Trump has now made the restoration of his personal relationship with Putin a top foreign-policy priority; negotiating an agreement to end the war in Ukraine is a secondary or tertiary concern.
29% : When Elon Musk publicly stated on X at the beginning of the month that the U.S. should quit NATO and the United Nations, Dugin echoed him.
22% : Unlike previous presidents, Trump did not publicly meet with Russian human-rights activists or opposition figures, and he paid zero attention to the Russian-supported war in eastern Ukraine, which started in 2014 and continued throughout his term.
21% : Most shockingly, at a summit meeting in Helsinki in 2018, Trump sided with the Russian dictator against his own intelligence community and would not acknowledge Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
20% : Kremlin surrogates, in both traditional media and social media, campaigned in support of Trump and against Clinton.
16% : In addition, Trump has insisted that (6) Ukraine cannot join NATO; (7) Zelensky must give up territory to Russia; (8) no new military aid for Ukraine will be made available, even previously appropriated funding; (9) U.S. forces deployed in Europe might be reduced and will not participate in any peacekeeping mission in Ukraine; and (10) sanctions on Russia could be lifted, although Trump suddenly reversed himself last week when he said he was "strongly considering" new sanctions and tariffs. To use Trump's favorite metaphor for dealmaking, these are not clever "cards" played to shape a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

*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.