Donald Trump’s popularity poses unexpected dilemma for Putin

U.S. President Donald Trump is proving to be somewhat popular within Russia, leaving the Kremlin to grapple with how to counter Russians’ love of a leader who isn’t President Vladimir Putin, recent media reports suggest.

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Why It Matters

Putin has long sought to cast the West—in particular the United States—as the enemy. In 2022, the Russian president accused the U.S. and its allies of “despotism” and “Satanism.”

However, Trump’s popularity since returning to the White House for a second term on January 20 makes it difficult for the Russian leader to demonize the U.S. and blame it and the West for Russians’ problems.

What To Know

VChK-OGPU, a news outlet that purports to have inside information from Russian security forces, said in a Telegram post on Wednesday that it had reliable information that the Kremlin was exploring ways to counter Trump’s popularity in the country.

On January 27, Repost, an independent Russian digital newspaper, published an article headlined “The Kremlin is concerned about the popularity of Trump and his ideas among Russians.”

That same day, Roman Tsymbalyuk, a Ukrainian journalist and YouTuber with 1.28 million subscribers, posted a video with a similar title: “The Kremlin is concerned about the abnormal growth of Trump’s popularity among the population.”

Citing an unnamed source, VChK-OGPU reported that media outlets in Russia had received a “strict order” to stop publishing news that reflected “the positive aspects of Trump’s domestic policies.”

“U.S. domestic policy now completely coincides with the values that the Kremlin previously made ‘unique’ for Russians,” the source said.

“If, under the policies of the previous U.S. administration, it was easy to create an image of an enemy for the average Russian citizen based on value orientations, now Trump, as president, meets the demands of Russian citizens more than Putin himself,” they added.

The source said Trump is popular in Russia because he is “a family man with an open large family” and doesn’t have information about his family members classified by the country’s special services, like Putin does.

The U.S. president also “firmly defends the interests of U.S. citizens in matters of migrant crime and in relations with their countries of origin,” they continued, and “promotes tax cuts for his own citizens and businesses, imposing tariffs and duties on foreign countries.”

“Whereas in Russia, there is an increase in taxes (on profits, VAT, personal income tax, recycling fees, tariffs of state monopolies in housing and communal services) for its own citizens and businesses and constant concessions, debt forgiveness, reduction of supply prices of resources for foreign countries,” the source said.

They added, “It is obvious to the Kremlin that Moscow will no longer be able to compete in the field of traditional values with Washington.”

Alexander Baunov, the editor-in-chief of Carnegie Politika and a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an analysis published on January 31 that in Russia, Trump is a new “anti-elitist president” who, “like a beloved Hollywood lone hero, is closer and more understandable to the generation of the Russian elite that lived through the 1990s or grew up watching American movies than Putin with his quiet apparatus career in the special services.”

He added that the social media platforms of Russian officials and deputies, which are open to comments, have been “inundated with demands to leave the WHO, tighten policies toward migrants, introduce a visa regime with Central Asian countries, declare diasporas and their leaders ‘foreign agents,’ and equate ethnic crime with terrorism.”

“In other words, to do what Trump does,” Baunov wrote.

“Trump is more energetic, fresher, newer than Putin, whose repetitions even his like-minded people are tired of. And the more the Russian elite is obliged to like their boss by virtue of their job, the more sincere and heartfelt is the sympathy for someone else,” he continued.

What People Are Saying

Alexander Baunov, the editor-in-chief of Carnegie Politika, wrote in commentary published in November: “Trump may successfully oust the Russian president from what Putin considered his own niche: as the leader and inspiration for anti-liberal, conservative, and anti-elitist forces in the West …

“The main difficulty Trump’s victory poses for the Kremlin is that while Trump may well want to demonstrate his efficiency by forcing a truce in Ukraine or at least freezing the conflict, it is not currently in Putin’s interests for that to happen.

“Right now, the Russian president does not appear to want any concrete proposals from the West for a ceasefire in Ukraine, even if they entail concessions from the Ukrainian side. The absence of such proposals has allowed Putin to continue the war while blaming Ukraine and the West for failing to offer a realistic peace plan.”

What Happens Next

It remains to be seen whether there will be a further breakdown of relations between Washington and Moscow over the war in Ukraine. Trump has pledged to end to war, which is set to see its third anniversary on February 22.

Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Washington’s allies expect the Trump administration to unveil a plan to end the conflict at next week’s Munich Security Conference in Germany.