Russian President Vladimir Putin is pleased by the indictments of former President Donald Trump, as he believes the attendant controversy will undermine the reputation of the United States internationally.
“As for the persecution of Trump, well, in today's conditions, in my view, that’s a good thing,” Putin said Tuesday at the Eastern Economic Forum. “Because it reveals the rotten American political system, which should not be able to claim it can teach others about democracy.”
Putin has sought for years to “undermin[e] confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes,” as a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on election interference in 2016 put it. Yet his remarks during the question-and-answer session Tuesday were unusual for their candor about the Kremlin’s malign attitude toward the United States, according to expatriate Russian critics.
“He is basically exposing his deeply-held desires, and this is not just Putin, this goes back to the Soviet leaders, this whole idea that the West is on its last legs,” Johns Hopkins University’s Sergey Radchenko, author of the forthcoming history of Kremlin efforts “to run the world” during the Cold War, told the Washington Examiner. “If a civil war broke out in America, Putin would be happy because this is what he wants, right? He wants this sort of thing. He wants to contribute to it.”
Trump has been indicted multiple times at the local, state, and federal level.
“Everything that is happening to Trump is the political persecution of a political rival. That is what it is,” Putin said. “And it is happening in the eyes of the U.S. public and the whole world. They have exposed their domestic problems.”
It’s a daring criticism for Putin to raise when considered in light of the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015, and the ongoing imprisonment of dissident Alexei Navalny — who was jailed on the grounds that he violated the terms of probation while comatose during his recovery from an attempted assassination by poisoning.
“I'm not surprised that he would not, you know, he would say that it's such a terrible thing that people are being arrested for political motives in the United States, even though everybody knows that actually, in Russia, regressions are being unveiled at an accelerated rate,” Radchenko said. “This whole tactic of whataboutism has been a really major part of, not just Russian, but predating Russian, Soviet political culture ... to deflect attention from domestic problems, domestic woes, by claiming that Western opponents have it worse.”
The Kremlin chief’s commentary on Trump’s legal jeopardy was touted promptly by former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost first her House GOP leadership post and then her primary last year after joining a Democratic-dominated select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party,” Cheney wrote on social media Tuesday afternoon. “Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it.”
Putin’s wide-ranging remarks appeared to offer an impromptu window into his perspective on global affairs.
"He touched on all the topics that he is discussing, basically, every day with his close entourage, and this is an expression of how he views things,” said expatriate Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago. "I think Trump is always on his mind because I think the current Russian strategy — it's sort of a delusional strategy, but the delusional strategy is based on [the idea that] Trump will get elected president and magically will change, will force [Ukraine] to negotiate with Putin [and] would stop sending munitions, weapons, to Ukraine.”
Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine in “one day” by threatening both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin allowed “that is something to be happy about,” but he downplayed the idea that Trump would follow through.
"So, I find it difficult to say what to expect from a new president, whoever it may be,” Putin said.
“It is unlikely, though, that any crucial change will take place, because the current authorities have conditioned American society to be anti-Russia in nature and spirit; that is how things are.”
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A broadcast on Russian state media offered a more optimistic perspective, from Moscow’s point of view, on the implications of Trump’s political future.
“He is the destroyer! If he gets elected, everything we said about [a potential] civil war will be on their agenda in reality,” Moscow State University deputy dean Andrey Sidorov said on Russian state media, according to a Russian Media Monitor translation. “Trump can really get it to the point that our geopolitical adversary will fall apart! Without any missiles!”