When Trump Becomes Putin’s Boy Toy - 8/18/25

About a month ago, I wrote in this space about how Donald Trump was beginning to sound like a spurned lover as he voiced his hurt feelings about the caddish treatment he had been receiving from Vladimir Putin.

“We get a lot of bulls--- thrown at us by Putin,” Trump told reporters in July after yet another fruitless conversation with his Russian counterpart. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” 

It was hard to miss the sense of personal betrayal in Trump’s voice, and it might not have been a coincidence that a few days later he had restored previously eliminated military aid to Ukraine, promised additional weaponry, and began to threaten damaging economic sanctions against Russia.

The KGB-trained Putin is a savvy suitor, though, and he quickly orchestrated a one-on-one summit meeting between himself and the cuckolded Trump to woo the American president back into a more obedient role. I had suggested in my previous column that Putin might consider sending candy and flowers to the White House to mend Trump’s broken heart. But the Russian leader came to Alaska bearing even more seductive gifts. 

In their brief news conference, Putin told an audience of several hundred journalists that he agreed with Trump’s frequent assertion that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had Trump been president in 2022 rather than Joe Biden. Trump also asserted in a post-summit interview that Putin supports his claim that the 2020 US presidential election that he lost to Biden had been rigged.

Say what you will about Vladimir Putin, but the man is certainly a world-class flirt. You could almost hear see the tiny little hearts surrounding Trump as he gushed about the personal dynamic between the two men. “The meeting was a 10 in the sense that we got along great,” Trump cooed to Sean Hannity, not mentioning the ceasefire that he had previously insisted would define the summit’s success.

Trump had warned that there would be “severe consequences” if a ceasefire agreement was not reached. Neither he nor Putin mentioned the topic after their meeting had concluded until Trump announced on social media the following morning that a ceasefire was no longer necessary. Nor was there any mention of the sanctions that Trump had threatened before Putin orchestrated the summit instead. Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians continued both the day of the summit itself and in the days that followed. 

Putin’s objectives for the summit were twofold: to buy himself additional time before facing any consequences for continuing the war and to elevate himself on the world stage by standing side-by-side with the American president. He could not have hoped for anything better than the outcomes on both of these matters. Trump even allowed Putin to speak first at their joint news conference and did not object when Putin used the platform to refer to the conflict’s “root causes,” the term Moscow uses to refer to Ukraine’s existence as an independent nation.

Putin is shrewd enough to recognize that it would not benefit him to allow Trump to feel as if he walked away completely empty-handed. Trump told European leaders after the summit that Putin had originally insisted that Russia must keep the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, two strategically critical areas in eastern Ukraine, but suggested that he had thwarted that ambition. (Although he told them the next day that a final treaty would require Russia to retain a portion of the Ukrainian land they had secured during the fighting.)

The next steps seem clear. Trump and Putin used their press conference to speculate about a follow-up summit that also includes Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and possible European representation. Trump will reassure Zelensky about the vague security guarantees to which he has alluded, most likely committing some US backing for a European-led peacekeeping mission. And that next summit will take place at the Kremlin’s preferred languid pace to allow Russia to prosecute its war against Ukraine exactly the way Putin has intended.

Trump, of course, delights in the spotlight. He also fancies himself a dealmaker. So sitting with Putin and Zelensky in front of a worldwide audience and being party to an agreement that provides Ukraine with insufficient Western protection and piecemeal military support will allow the American president to achieve his most important goals. But in the meantime, his significant other continues to kill.