Ashley Elizabeth Miller

One year after Russia declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Vladimir Putin, a KGB officer serving in Dresden, Germany at the time, moved back to his home country with his eyes on politics. As an unknown name, Putin sought a way to get his story out there — fast — by making a movie about himself, titled Power. 

I learned this fun fact from a PBS documentary, Putin’s Way — which I recently watched after reading Masha Gessen’s book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.

Now is an apt time to study up on the autocrat from Leningrad — where Putin was born in 1952 at the height of the Cold War, one year before Stalin’s death— as he seems to have once again caught the ear of Donald Trump. In recent days, the U.S. president has parroted his Russian counterpart’s talking points on Ukraine, going so far as to call the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky — who was democratically elected in 2019 — a dictator.

Putin Altered Russia’s Constitution to Stay In Power

Let’s be clear about who the corrupt player is here: In 2000, Putin was handed his post as president by a small score of very wealthy Russian businessmen — the oligarchs — who quietly took over the country when the economy transitioned from communism to capitalism in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin.

Putin has ruled Russia during the course of five U.S. presidents. Yup, 25 years. Albeit, from 2008 to 2012, Putin assumed the role of prime minister and put a puppet in as president, Dmitry Medvedev, to quell a growing dissident movement making a ruckus about him running for president again (among other things). Before then, Russia’s constitution had barred presidents from serving two consecutive terms.

(Oh, by the way — Medvedev, currently deputy head of Russia’s security council, wrote on X about Trump’s attacks against Ukraine: “If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the U.S. president, I would have laughed out loud.”)

Trump and Zelensky Have a History

Back in 2019, President Trump pressured Ukraine’s new president, Zelensky, to dig up dirt on his political foe, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter. To ensure he followed through, Trump withheld $391 million in military aid to Ukraine.

At the time, Zelensky enthusiastically agreed, saying, “We will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.”

But things fell apart when a CIA whistleblower filed a complaint about the call — finding its contents fodder for corruption — with the U.S. Inspector General Michael Atkinson. After bipartisan support, Trump released the aid to Ukraine. Then that September, the House Ethics Committee started an investigation into the matter, after which Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for the president’s impeachment.

Donald Trump was formally impeached in a dramatic hearing the next year. And what happened? Who’s the old dude from Kentucky who swept all the shit under the rug, erasing all red flags from the president’s resume? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell led a vote to acquit Trump from the charges. (So Trump could run for president again.)

Loyalty Lies with Putin

All that being said — Trump and Zelensky know each other well. Trump has most likely harbored ill will for Ukraine as he associates the country and its leader with his fraught political past, which even news-hungry Americans seem to forget.

Now, due to Trump’s admiration for Putin’s style of law-and-order and Russia’s kleptocracy, there is little hope for Ukraine to find an ally in the U.S. in its fight for sovereignty — a battle its citizens have already twice fought to protect since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 (the same year as Russia).

What’s Next for Ukraine?

Looks to be peace for a price—or, more realistically, just the latter. Trump’s team, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their Russian counterparts, met in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia—a friend to both the U.S. and Russia—for talks to end the war in Ukraine, which Russia started three years ago. The kicker? No one from Ukraine or Europe was there.

Now, Trump says a deal could be reached for peace within a week—framing the narrative to make it seem as though he is the hero coming to save the Ukrainians from their own leader. What does he want? Access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves.

In September, Ukraine floated a mineral-exchange deal like this to America, realizing it looked likely Trump would win in November. It was never formalized but the idea was Ukraine would trade access to its mines (which are full of 20 metals the U.S. has designated to be “critical”) in exchange for security guarantees.

Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, went to make a similar deal with Zelensky this week, pressuring him to sign an agreement or else people in Washington would be upset, he said, according to an account by a Republican senator given to The Journal.

Putin lets Trump use the mic but retains control of what is written in the script, and I do not believe he will run out of ink anytime soon.