Andrey Piontkovsky: "Stone on the neck"

“The amusing “presidential elections” on March 18, 2018 will not decide the issue of power in Russia. Because this issue is being decided today. And not by one hundred million voters, but by about one hundred members of the expanded Politburo of the Russian kleptocracy. The surname “Putin” is certainly included on the short list of reputable business officials. But for the first time in 17 years of his rule, the current president is faced with certain problems in this environment,” the publicist and political expert notes in a blog on the Radio Liberty website.

“The “elite” doubted Putin’s ability to effectively perform in the next 6 years the brigade’s most important interface function in its relations with the eternally hated and eternally beloved West. The failure of the neo-imperial adventures, for which Putin took personal responsibility, became the regime’s biggest foreign policy defeat and undermined its economic bonds, extremely aggravating relations with Western partners who control the funds transferred abroad.”

“On July 7, the president for life took place in Hamburg, perhaps the most important casting in his life. Not in front of the G20, of course, but in front of his Rublev audience. If his long-delayed first meeting with Donald Trump had gone according to the Paris scenario, then the entourage would have decided , perhaps, to take decisive measures. Putin desperately needed a “victory”; it was important for him to show that he was still capable of solving world problems together with Trump himself. And Trump did not let his friend Vladimir down.”

"...The triumph of Putin's will lasted only a few days. Returning to Washington, Trump faced fierce criticism of his behavior and new accusations of cooperation with the Kremlin during the election campaign. “Why, oh why does Trump love Russia so much?” - so Fareed Zakaria headlined his unprecedentedly harsh column in the Washington Post. Its ending reflects the prevailing mood in the American capital, which does not bode well for Trump: “Perhaps there is a simple explanation for everything that happened. Maybe Trump simply admires Putin as a leader. Trump may share his senior adviser Stephen Bannon's vision of the world, in which Russia is not an ideological adversary but a white Christian ally opposed to Muslims. But perhaps there is another explanation for the admiration for Russia and its leader. This mystery is now at the heart of the Trump presidency, and there is no doubt that special counsel Robert Mueller will try to solve it."

“The domestic political victory that Trump, for some reasons not yet established by Mueller, decided to give Putin turned out to be Pyrrhic. The Kremlin’s heads simply cannot wrap their heads around a simple consideration: the President of the United States is not the godfather of a criminal community; even having achieved his loyalty in one way or another, It will not be possible to steer the American political system from Moscow. On the contrary, every step Trump takes towards Putin causes a sharp reaction in Washington, which is transformed into very specific legislative acts.

Trump turned out to be not Putin’s asset, but a stone around Putin’s neck. And Putin is a stone around Trump’s neck. This is the true result of the massive Operation Trumpnash. And the conclusion seemingly received by the expanded Politburo on July 7 - the boss is still coping - was again called into question."

“In retrospect, it is clear what a huge mistake the Kremlin made by betting on Trump. Clinton’s presidency actually did not threaten anything from the Kremlin: the current fierce anti-Putin position of the Democrats is due to the domestic political situation. This position is not so much anti-Putin as anti-Trump. Democrats feel that Putin is the most vulnerable place of the current US president, and they are hitting there mercilessly. And if Clinton had come to power, most likely, some kind of new “reset” would have taken place. But now all the bridges between “Putin’s” and the American establishment have been burned.”