Putin’s Wishlist

Everything Putin Wanted, Trump Delivered

Hawkeye1972

Sep 06, 2026

There is no smoking-gun proof that Donald Trump is an actual Manchurian Candidate (younger readers: it’s a classic 1959 novel that spawned two movies). There doesn’t need to be. Russian influence in American politics has been documented by U.S. intelligence agencies, by Senate investigations, and by two Special Counsel reports. What matters now is simpler:

The practical effect of Trump’s actions, across two terms, has aligned so consistently with Vladimir Putin’s strategic interests that the Kremlin would struggle to improve on the results.

Below is our running list. It was incomplete when we first published it on the quislings.info website. It is more incomplete now.

As you go through this list, try to think of the Republicans who have voiced objections. If you can think of any, list them in the comment section at the end.

We’ll start with the small stuff…

Personal Deference to Vladimir Putin

Trump has praised Putin in terms no American president has used about an adversary - calling his move to fracture Ukraine “genius” and “very savvy,” and calling the man himself “smart,” “a strong leader,” “a real leader.” At the 2018 Helsinki summit, asked whether he trusted his own intelligence agencies or Putin on Russian election interference, Trump chose Putin: “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Every U.S. intelligence agency had concluded the opposite; former CIA Director John Brennan called it “nothing short of treasonous.” The pattern was set early. Trump has never really broken it.

A Bankrupt America

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has already added an estimated $3.4 trillion to the national debt - the largest single-bill increase in American history - and CBO says that could grow to $4.5 trillion if the bill’s temporary tax breaks, set to expire in 2028 and 2029, are made permanent, which Republicans have said they intend to do. In May 2025, on the strength of the original bill alone, Moody’s stripped the United States of its last perfect credit rating. A financially weakened America has less capacity to project power or fund the deterrence that keeps Russia in check.

Putin doesn’t need to beat America in a fight. He just needs to watch it spend itself into irrelevance.

Dismantling America’s Soft Power

USAID, which delivered American influence to more than 100 countries, was effectively shut down in early 2025. Voice of America went dark. The State Department was gutted. These programs cost a fraction of military spending and produced outsized strategic returns; their elimination doesn’t just shrink American reach, it opens a vacuum Russia and China are already filling.

Threatening and Estranging America’s Closest Allies

Fracturing the Western alliance has eluded the Kremlin for decades. Trump has advanced it faster than Putin ever could. In early 2025 he threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal and to seize Greenland - NATO territory - by force if necessary.

Canada has gotten the worst of it, with Trump calling the country’s leader “Governor” and repeating a demand that Canada become the 51st state. 2026 made it worse. When trade talks collapsed in August, he raised tariffs to 50% on $20 billion of Canadian goods; Canada retaliated dollar-for-dollar. Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t mince words: “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.” That’s not rhetoric between allies. That’s rhetoric between adversaries - and Putin doesn’t have to lift a finger to benefit from it.

Playing the Kim Card

Trump has also been busy alienating an ally on the other side of the world. In August 2026, after South Korea declined to help pressure Iran, Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with Seoul, calling the exercises “costly” and a “signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” toward Kim Jong Un - whom Trump called “respectful” and credited with a “very good relationship.” He’s angling for another meeting with Kim.

North Korea is not a bystander in Trump’s Russia story. Ukrainian intelligence says Pyongyang now supplies up to half of Russia’s ammunition, along with troops and ballistic missiles for strikes on Ukrainian cities. Praising Kim and squeezing South Korea over it doesn’t just strain a 70-year alliance. It flatters the leader of Putin’s own arms depot.

Undermining NATO, Then Reassuring Moscow It’s Safe to Test

Trump has repeatedly suggested the U.S. might not honor its Article 5 commitments to allies he deems insufficiently generous, once saying he’d “encourage” Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who miss spending targets. In late August 2026, he sent CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow for talks with Russia’s SVR and FSB chiefs, a trip several outlets reported was meant to warn Moscow off attacking NATO territory. Trump waved that off as “standard business,” then told Axios he wasn’t worried about a Russian move against NATO “at all”: “There is no problem.”

Destroying confidence in Article 5 is the single most destabilizing thing any NATO leader could do. Putin has wanted this outcome for 25 years; Trump keeps telling him not to worry about it.

Rehabilitating the Kremlin on the World Stage

On August 31, 2026, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov sat down with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a G20 finance meeting in Asheville, North Carolina - Russia’s first in-person G20 appearance since the 2022 invasion. European ministers boycotted the traditional family photo rather than stand next to him. Germany’s finance minister called the invitation “a signal I find troubling.” Trump’s response: “We like getting along with everybody. One of the reasons I’m so successful, I get along with everybody.”

Four years of allied effort to isolate Russia diplomatically, undone in an afternoon, with the American president’s blessing.

The Iran War - A Gift to Russia’s Treasury, and It Keeps Giving

In February 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. Iran’s response - mining the Strait of Hormuz and attacking merchant shipping - triggered what the International Energy Agency called the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Brent crude surged roughly 65%, from about $72 to nearly $120 a barrel. Russia, which needs high oil prices to fund its war in Ukraine, collected an estimated $15 billion in extra revenue almost overnight. Then the Trump Treasury Department made it easier for Russia to keep collecting: it issued licenses authorizing the sale of sanctioned Russian crude, and has since extended sanctions waivers on Russian oil for months, well past the point the Hormuz crisis justified them. Senators Warren, Shaheen, and Schumer have publicly objected. The oil money keeps flowing to Moscow regardless.

Abandoning Ukraine - and Parroting Russian Propaganda

Russia’s full invasion began in February 2022. Trump has repeatedly claimed Ukraine “started” it, echoing Russian state media, and in 2025 publicly berated President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Since then, Trump has pursued a peace process on terms that ratify Russia’s territorial conquests, at one point saying of Putin, “he’s won certain property.” A deal was reportedly 90% complete by early 2026; Russia kept stalling while striking Ukrainian cities anyway, and Trump’s own June 2026 deadline passed without an agreement. By late August, he was sending his CIA director to float a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky, the same format Putin has rejected before. Trump’s pressure has landed far more often on Kyiv than on the aggressor.

Undermining the Dollar as the World’s Reserve Currency

Here’s a Kremlin objective perhaps more fundamental than any single alliance: the dollar’s grip on the global financial system is the mechanism that lets Washington freeze Russian central bank assets, cut banks out of SWIFT, and make sanctions bite. Weaken that grip, and the sanctions weapon weakens with it.

Trump has been doing the weakening.

In April 2025 he imposed sweeping, erratic “Liberation Day” tariffs on trading partners including close allies; markets plunged, and the credibility of the U.S. as a reliable economic partner took a serious hit.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill’s” $3.4-trillion deficit addition - headed toward $4.5 trillion if its temporary tax breaks are made permanent - layered onto the cost of the Iran war, has kept long-term Treasury yields stubbornly high even as the Fed has cut short-term rates - the bond market’s way of pricing in doubt about U.S. fiscal discipline.

By the fourth quarter of 2025, the dollar’s share of global currency reserves had fallen to 56.8%, its lowest level since 1994, as central banks diversified into euros, gold, and other currencies.

China, Russia’s primary economic partner, has been promoting exactly that shift. Every point the dollar loses is a point Moscow’s sanctions-evasion strategy gains.

Closing Argument

None of this requires a hidden hand or a secret payment. It only requires noticing that, item by item, the record keeps pointing the same direction.

If you’re wondering about motive rather than effect, we’ve made that case separately in “Flooding the Zone - A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Track of the Corruption,” where the pattern looks a lot more personal - starting, perhaps, with a hoped-for Trump Tower on the Russian Black Sea.

But motive is a bonus. The record above stands on its own. We’ll keep adding to it.

Quislings@Substack

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