The idea was to isolate him, make him an outcast, put him in a box as punishment for brazen violations of international law. They kicked him out of the club of world leaders, disrupted his country’s economy, even issued an arrest warrant against him for war crimes.
But Vladimir V. Putin doesn’t seem so isolated these days. Mr. Putin, the czar-envy Russian President who invaded neighboring Ukraine without provocation, killing or injuring hundreds of thousands, is having a moment in the United States.
With the help of a populist former Fox News star and America’s richest man, Mr. Putin has gained a platform to justify his actions even as Russian and American journalists languish in his prisons. His favored candidate is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination while Congress weighs abandoning Ukraine to the tender mercies of Russian invaders.
Mr Putin’s appearance with Tucker Carlson on Elon Musk’s social media platform came amid a debate over security aid on Capitol Hill, led by Donald J. Trump, offers a moment of reflection on the dramatic transformation of American politics in recent years. A Republican Party that once defined itself through muscular resistance to Russia is increasingly turning toward a form of neo-isolationism with, in some quarters, elements sympathetic to Moscow.
Instead of a ruthless autocrat seeking to conquer territory through Europe’s most violent war since the fall of the Nazis, Mr. Putin has become something of an ally of some right-wing forces in the United States. Mr Trump, who hailed his aggression as “genius” just before Russian forces stormed the Ukrainian border in 2022. And Mr Putin appears to be gaining ground in the US capital in a way that would once have been unimaginable, with help from a party that still pays homage to Ronald Reagan.
“For Putin, it’s a manifestation of American weakness,” said Yevgenia Albats, a freelance Russian journalist who moved to the United States last year after threats of prosecution. To Mr. Putin, he said, Carlson’s interview proved that “the Americans realized they lost the war with him” and were “sending an emissary to the next president to confirm his success.” It also serves a domestic purpose for Mr. Putin, he added. “It’s a message to the elites who support the ceasefire: You see, the Americans rolled their eyes.”
American politics didn’t need Mr. Putin to screw it up. The rise of nativism, populism and polarization are domestic phenomena with historical roots. After decades of rigid bipartisan Cold War consensus about America’s role in the world, globalization, mass immigration and foreign wars have discredited the old thinking for many and opened the door to figures like Mr. Trump, whose promise to put “America first” resonated. in large areas of the country.
The shift, however, has been nowhere more dramatic than when it comes to Mr. Putin, whose administration has spent years pumping out misinformation on American social media. Casting himself as a defender of traditional culture against moral decay in the West, a place of “absolute Satanism” with “various supposed sexes”, Mr Putin has built something of a following in the United States.
More than one in four Americans, or 26 percent, have a favorable view of the Russian leader, according to a YouGov survey, up from just 15 percent in early 2021 before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine a year later. Even if this number is an outlier compared to other surveys, it suggests that there is a certain audience for the Kremlin master.
Mr. Carlson is among those who have become more willing to listen and convey Russia’s message to Americans. As others have noted, Mr. Carlson used to refer to Mr. Putin as the “Russian dictator” who is “aligned with our enemies,” but now argues that Moscow has been misunderstood, or at least not listened to. His comments about the attack on Ukraine have been gleefully repeated in Russian state media.
In a video explaining his decision to interview Mr. Putin, Mr. Carlson claimed that Americans and other English speakers did not know what was really going on about the war in Ukraine. “Nobody told them the truth,” he said. “Their media is corrupt. They are lying to their readers and viewers.”
Never mind that even the Kremlin said Mr. Carlson was not telling the truth when he said he was giving Mr. Putin a platform because “not a single Western journalist bothered to interview him.” Many Western news organizations have requested interviews since the 2022 invasion, Dmitry S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, confirmed, but the Kremlin chose Mr. Carlson because it considered him more open than “the traditional Anglo-Saxon media.”
The two-hour interview posted online Thursday night wasn’t exactly compelling footage. Mr Putin skipped right through Mr Carlson’s opening questions to deliver a nearly half-hour lecture on the history of Russia and Ukraine dating back to the year 832, followed by his standard litany of complaints about the West. Mr. Carlson pressed Mr. Putin to release Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter arrested in Russia a year ago on espionage charges that he and his employer vehemently denied, but he barely challenged the Russian leader and let him speak at length without interruption.
His decision to give Mr Putin such a space caused a predictable wave of outrage. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Mr. Carlson a “useful idiot,” adopting the phrase for Western dogs attributed (if apocryphal) to Lenin, and former Representative Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., called him. “traitor”.
Mrs. Clinton went on to say that the interview highlighted a broader and troubling phenomenon in the United States. “It’s a sign that there are people in this country right now who are like a fifth column for Vladimir Putin,” he told MSNBC this week.
Among those most frustrated by this are traditional Republicans such as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the party’s Senate leader, who faces growing skepticism about Ukraine aid in his own conference.
While 11 Senate Republicans voted against aid to Ukraine in May 2022 shortly after the invasion, 31 voted not to advance aid Thursday, and it remains unclear whether House Republicans will allow a vote on the package.
Mr. Kinzinger, who split with Mr. Trump and became one of his staunchest critics, recalled that Republicans used to attack President Barack Obama for not doing more to help Ukraine when Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014. Mr. Kinzinger wrote on social media on Thursday, “Today the GOP would have attacked Obama in 2014 for doing too much about Ukraine.”
Mr Trump is waiting in the wings, determined to win back his old office. While Robert S. Mueller’s investigators in 2019 found no criminal collusion between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin’s Russia during the 2016 campaign, the former president’s puzzling affinity for the Russian ruler remains strong and, for many, still confusing.
Even in a recent campaign speech, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Putin approvingly to argue that the Justice Department is unfairly prosecuting him, quoting the Russian who said the legal case against the former president “shows his rottenness American political system”.
At other times, Mr Trump has refused to say whether he hopes Russia or Ukraine will win the war and has said he would happily trade Ukrainian territory to induce Russia to end the conflict.
Mr. Putin took note. As he gets his message out on social media, watches American lawmakers hesitate to arm the victims of his aggression, and awaits the outcome of the presidential race, the Russian leader sees a path outside the penalty box.
