“It was a good day for Russia,” US President Donald Trump commented in 2021, mocking his predecessor Joe Biden after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.
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He was, arguably, not wrong, as the meeting indeed “gave a very big stage” to Putin’s embattled regime, as Trump put it, although it helped the Biden administration stabilise ties with Moscow before it moved to focus on its rivalry with Beijing.
But that summit was months before Russia launched its brutal aggression against Ukraine three years ago, putting the US-led West on a collision course with Moscow.
It also paled in comparison to Trump’s Helsinki summit with Putin in 2018, when the US leader was too tamed to condemn Russia’s election interference.
After going around Ukraine and Europe to open direct peace talks with Moscow in Saudi Arabia last week, the Trump administration shocked the world again by voting with Russia against Ukraine at the United Nations on Monday.
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It was no doubt a great day for Putin, as the highly symbolic UN votes on the third anniversary of the Ukraine war marked an official split between the US and its traditional European allies, something Moscow has long yearned for.