Important to note that there are different types of US-Russia presidential meetings. This type is particularly significant and thus a very clear sign of the Trump administration's desire to align with the Kremlin. 🧵

https://twitter.com/ruth_deyermond/status/1953953096591454507

Before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was standard for new US and Russian presidents to meet. This allowed them to work through issues of concern to the US (as the vastly more powerful state, the agenda was set by the US). This happened even when relations were cool.

For any non-Baltic person interested in the "significant advantage" of being occupied by the USSR for nearly 50 years, I can recommend okupacijasmuzejs.lv/en vabamu.ee/en/visit-us/
olkm.lt/en/ I also recommend:

Term 2 Trump foreign policy - from tariffs to NATO to soft power to China and Russia - is an epic mess. One reason seems to be that the administration is operating with two conflicting, equally flawed, views of the world and the US's place in it. 🧵 Trump administration policy is partly grounded in a worldview in which the US is one of several great powers, each with its own sphere of influence, but also in a view of the US as the unconstrained unipole.

Absolutely agree with Amb. Fried that this is very damaging - to the US's credibility and national interest. But the idea that this will damage the US position in talks with Russia suggests that these are genuine negotiations. I really don't think they are. 🧵

https://twitter.com/AmbDanFried/status/1903385692119384189

Everything we can hear and see and everything we know about the dominant figures in the Trump administration indicates that the talks are being seen as a mechanism for building an informal US-Russia alliance. Attempting to carve up Ukraine is part of how this is being done.

“Do you still believe [Putin] when he tells you he wants peace?” Trump: “You know, I believe him, I believe him, I think we’re doing very well with Russia […] I’m finding it more difficult, frankly to deal with Ukraine.” 🧵

https://twitter.com/Mylovanov/status/1898072831532867757

Trump’s claim he’s “strongly considering” sanctions against Russia needs to be viewed in the context of this comment and the many other similar things he's said in the past. Penalising Russia is not something he's ever wanted to do, whatever Russia has done.

This is a generally excellent thread, but this is not correct as far as Russia is concerned - Trump has been highly consistent in his approach to Russia since before his 1st term (though the approach isn't internally coherent). 🧵

https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1895177611720241490

Trump has *always* spoken and acted as if, in his words, "getting along with Russia" is one of his foreign policy priorities. This is not something on which he has ever changed position, and there is no reason to think he will do so now or in the future.

Lots of talk about "spheres of influence" in the context of the Trump admin's novel approach to foreign policy and their apparent plan to hand some/all of Ukraine to Russia, which is very keen on the "spheres of influence" idea. It's a non-starter for both Russia and the US 🧵 The idea that an International Liberal Order - much hated by Russia and others, though always more of an aspiration than a reality - can be replaced by a return to 19th century great power politics, where the US, Russia, and China carve up the world between them, is delusional.

"Over 4 years [of Trump's presidency], there was no Russian aggression." Er, not quite. 🧵

https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1890088012270207134

Throughout Trump's 1st term, Russian aggression continued in Eastern Ukraine, killing hundreds of civilians and hundreds, maybe thousands, of Ukrainian soldiers defending their country. @OKhromeychuk's brother was killed during Trump's time in office.

As was always highly likely, the Trump administration has given Russia what it wanted on Ukraine's NATO membership and Ukraine's borders. It's also making it clear that it has no interest in Ukraine's security.

https://twitter.com/nickschifrin/status/1889678322289738146

This is, first and most importantly, a disaster for Ukraine, but it's also catastrophically bad for European and US security. The US and some in Europe will tell themselves that this is about the US sensibly reprioritising on security. But Putin will see it as capitulation to him

A few quick thoughts on the reporting and the reality of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.🧵 Both US and European news media are likely to talk a lot about the “unpredictability” of Trump’s foreign policy as if it’s some kind of strategy. This is misleading – Trump foreign policy wasn’t and isn’t unpredictable, it’s incoherent.

If Trump's demands for 5% spending on defence really plunges European NATO members into crisis mode then they haven't been paying attention. It seems to me that the point of this demand is that it's designed not to be met. That's what should be causing alarm. 🧵

https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1876936037022237146

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO members' defence spending as a percentage of GDP has been transformed. Compare 2021 and 2024 estimates:

Time for another end of year 🧵. Apologies (again) for the enormous length. In many ways, late 2024 looks like late 2023, but choices confronting policymakers and citizens are both more constrained and more urgent as we move closer to a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine and to a post-West US - and thus a post-US West - under a Trump administration.

Not sure any state in the world has a foreign policy or diplomatic infrastructure that can cope with what’s going on at the moment. Foreign policy is, obviously, about advancing priorities (and dealing with the legacy of previous governments’ foreign policies) while broadly trying to hold everything else as constant as possible in order to achieve that.

Given how cautious the Biden admin has been in Ukraine because of this fear, it was always clear they wouldn't have authorised the use of ATACMS if there had been any risk of Russia using nuclear weapons. 🧵

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1859995943648755870

The fact that Putin revised the nuclear doctrine, used his exciting new missile, and made threatening noises on TV isn't an indication that we've moved nearer to the use of nuclear weapons in the last week - on the contrary, it's a strong indication that nuclear use is not likely

Many analysts and journalists are still framing what's coming as roughly like a traditional presidency: led by the president, filled with appointees that have real roles, aiming to produce workable policy that serves US interests. I don’t think any of this is looking correct. Looking at the incoming administration picks from Gabbard to Kennedy to Gaetz to Hegseth, it seems pretty obvious that these are not serious nominations in the sense that they are expected to conduct government business in the way that’s normally understood of those roles.

I’ve seen several people argue that Trump might not be as bad on Ukraine as some suggest and cited his administration’s supply of arms to Kyiv as evidence for this. I understand why people are keen to find positives for Ukraine, but I think this is wrong. On arms: the claim is often that Trump supplied them after Obama blocked them. This is only partly true. The Obama administration allowed the commercial export of weapons to Ukraine, but did not supply them directly.

The greatest error that the US has made in relation to Russia’s war against Ukraine is just the latest variant of the same error that US administrations have been making for nearly 30 years: not taking Russia seriously. An enormous 🧵 Immediately after the USSR collapsed, Bush 41 and Clinton took Russia seriously as a threat to international stability and security. The fate of the USSR’s nukes, the possibility of Russia disintegrating, or of a Red or Brown Russian president meant that the US prioritized Russia

One of the odd things about Putin’s statement that allowing Ukraine to use long range missiles inside Russia really is a red line – honest, not like all the other red lines – is that saying it so publicly makes it much harder for the US *not* to allow it. Having indicated that it’s now maybe, possibly, open to saying yes soon-ish, if the Biden administration changes its mind in response to this, it will make the US look coercible by adversaries. That’s not a signal the US wants to send to Russia and certainly not to China.

Coming to this late, but *if* the Biden administration is imposing limits on Ukraine because “the US will eventually want to reset relations with Moscow”, then they are making an enormous mistake. 🧵 politico.com/news/2024/08/2…
The use of the term ‘reset’ is instructive (and perhaps not surprising given the personnel overlap between the Obama and Biden administrations). To understand just how impossible another reset with Russia is for the foreseeable future, it’s worth looking at the last one.

I'm not sure it really matters what Putin's hold on Trump is, what matters is how consistent and how strong it seems to be.

https://twitter.com/lukeharding1968/status/1826298021883068572

Over the years, people have suggested lots of explanations for Trump's admiration for, even deference to, Putin: money, kompromat, manipulation by smarter people around him, a preference for dictators, a combination of some or all of these.

Not a fan of this simplistic form of Realism, but taking it on its own terms, this is not an accurate analysis. By Realist measures, we are not in a multipolar world, we are in a world with two great powers: the USA and China. Claims of multipolarity are Russian fantasy. For about 20 years, the Russian govt and the Russian analytical elite have been announcing the arrival of a multipolar order, in which several great powers will dominate international affairs. Unsurprisingly, they claim Russia is one of the.