Trump 2.0 would be no easy ride for Vladimir Putin

MOSCOW—Many American elites, their media allies and card-carrying Democrats are convinced that a second Trump presidency would present Vladimir Putin with only opportunities. The reality is that a Trump 2.0 administration would likely bring more problems than the Russian leader has at present.

This soft-on-Putin narrative stems from the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory alleging that Trump was either a full-blown Russian agent or easily manipulated by Putin during his first term. Check the record, though, and it’s clear that Trump imposed more sanctions on Russia than any US president before him until Joe Biden.

Trump failed to implement campaign pledges to improve ties with Russia due to the pressure applied on him by the Russiagate accusation and the way in which some permanent members of the US military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, spelled “deep state”, subverted his policy vision.

Trump also bombed Syria early in his presidency in response to what Russia considered to be a false flag chemical weapons provocation, which Barack Obama balked at doing in 2013 and thus called Russia’s bluff from back then.

Another irritant in bilateral ties was the sanctions that Trump imposed on the Nord Stream II pipeline, motivated by his bid to poach the European energy market from Russia for American producers.

Russia was also displeased that Trump did nothing to encourage France, Germany and Ukraine to implement their obligations under the Minsk agreements to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine.

These and other issues caused Russia to regard Trump’s first presidency as a lost opportunity to enter into a meaningful rapprochement and to