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WASHINGTON: As his White House meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart devolved into a stunning blowup, President Donald Trump leaned on a familiar refrain to explain his unique kinship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said Friday, raising his voice and gesturing with his hands as he recounted the long-since-concluded saga of a federal investigation in which both he and the Russian president played starring roles.
“He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, ever hear of that deal?” Trump said.
The pointed reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election underscored the extent to which Trump’s lingering fury over an inquiry he has misleadingly branded a “hoax” remains top of mind more than eight years after it began.
It also made clear that Trump’s view of a war Russia launched against Ukraine three years ago is colored not only by his relationship with Putin and the alliance he believes they share but also by his fraught past with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was a central player in the first of two impeachment cases against Trump during his first four years in office.
Here’s a look at what the American president means when he says “Russia, Russia, Russia“:
Investigations tied to Putin connections
Questions over Trump’s connections to Putin followed him into his first presidency and hung over him for most of his term, spurring investigations by the Justice Department and Congress and the appointment of a special counsel who brought criminal charges against multiple Trump allies.
While running for office, Trump cast doubt on the idea that Russian government hackers had stolen the emails of Democrats, including his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, and orchestrated their public release in an effort to boost his candidacy and harm hers.
Then, as president, he broke with his own intelligence community’s firm finding that Russia and Russia alone was to blame for the hack. Even when he begrudgingly conceded that Russia might be responsible, he also suggested the culprit might be a “400-pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.”
In July 2018, while standing alongside Putin in Helsinki, Trump appeared to embrace the Russian leader’s protestations over the conclusions of US intelligence officials by saying, “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”
He added that “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia.
All the while, he memorably raged against the investigation, calling it a “hoax” and “witch hunt” and, as he did at the White House last week, repeatedly deriding all the “Russia, Russia, Russia” attention.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation wrapped up in 2019 and left no doubt that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping and criminal fashion and that the Trump campaign had welcomed the help. But the inquiry did not find sufficient evidence to prove that the two sides had illegally colluded to tip the outcome of the election.
‘Do us a favor’
If Trump’s history with Russia appears to have contributed to his worldview of the current conflict, so too has his past with Ukraine.
He held a call in 2019 with Zelensky and pushed him to investigate corruption allegations against Democratic rival Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden went on to win.
The call — which included Trump’s memorable line: “I would like you to do us a favor, though” — was reported by a CIA officer-turned-whistleblower who alleged that the president appeared to be soliciting interference from a foreign country in the US election.
After Trump’s call with Zelensky, the White House temporarily halted US aid to the struggling ally facing hostile Russian forces at its border. The money was eventually released as Congress intervened.
Trump was subsequently impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate.
The president’s skepticism of Ukraine went beyond the call. During his first term, he also seemingly bought into a long-discredited conspiracy theory that connects Ukraine, not Russia, to the 2016 political interference and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and repeatedly accused the FBI of a lackluster investigation that led to the blaming of the Kremlin.
What happens next?
The long-term repercussions of the Oval Office spat, in which Trump called Zelensky “disrespectful” in the most hostile public exchange in memory between world leaders at the White House, remain to be seen.
But the immediate consequences are clear, with Trump on Monday directing a “pause” to US assistance to Ukraine as he seeks to pressure Zelensky to engage in peace talks with Russia. Earlier, the US president again blasted the Ukrainian leader after Zelensky noted that a deal to end the war “is still very, very far away.”
Zelensky, meanwhile, left Washington without signing a minerals deal that Trump said would have moved Ukraine closer to ending its war with Russia. He’s not welcome back, Trump said on social media, until he’s “ready for Peace.”
With the US-Ukraine relationship now in jeopardy, Zelensky has used a series of posts on X to express his thanks to the American people, Trump and Congress for “all the support.”
European leaders, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, have embraced Zelensky in the aftermath of the White House fight.
In Russia, officials are relishing the conflict, sensing an opportunity to move closer to the US That window seemed to open last month when the US, in a dramatic reversal in position, split from European allies by refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in votes on UN resolutions seeking an end to the war.
In an interview with a Russian state TV reporter that aired Sunday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the new US administration is “rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.”
“This largely coincides with our vision,” he added.