Weekend Update #115: Trump is Openly Operating Under Russian Reflexive Control
Ukrainian Ranged Strikes;
Hello Everyone,’
This week Donald Trump said lots of “interesting” things. He threatened America’s enemies with military action and subordination—saying he was willing to do what was necessary to defend American security. And the enemies he put on notice were Denmark, Greenland, Canada and Panama—all US allies. In using language not entirely dissimilar from that which Putin uses regularly about Ukraine, or “Realists” used to justify Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump spoke about incorporating them into a US empire or even into the US itself. I wrote this piece about it—and I will mention it now, because its one of the signs of how Trump is already reshaping US foreign policy that could have implications for Ukraine. He does not seem to put any stress on alliances and spouts realist tropes similarly to Putin.
It was just one of the signals in the past week about a very different mindset that Trump and his incoming team are bringing in to the question of Ukraine. Trump continues to show how his thinking remains guided by Russian talking points and Russian reflexive control—which is the first story this week.
Also a few other stories—Ukraine unleashed a series of long range attacks which deserve some comment. Ukraine is increasingly showing what it wants to do—though questions remain about whether it has the capacity to carry it through.
Also….
Trump is Openly Operating Under Russian Reflexive Control
For those who are new to this Substack, the concept of Russian reflexive control is something I’ve been writing about for a while.
It is a Soviet-era concept that plays a great role in Russian international behavior. Russian reflexive control is based on the idea that the Russians can achieve their foreign policy goals by getting groups (think the Realists) to accept the Russian way of thinking as the basis of their intellectual framework. For instance—the idea that Ukraine was not a real state and that Ukrainians would be happy to join them, which was widespread before the Russian full-scale invasion, and repeated regularly in the think-tank community, was a classic example of Russian reflexive control. They had convinced many people to doubt Ukrainian nationhood—and that had very large policy implications. If you want to read more about that—you can read the report that Eliot Cohen and I wrote: The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study in Analytic Failure
This week, Trump reconfirmed how much he is under Russian reflexive control when he approaches the war. He repeated the Russian-influenced line on Russia’s interest in Ukraine which, supposedly precipitated the full-scale invasion. He basically blamed Biden and not Putin for the Russian attack.
"A big part of the problem is, Russia - for many, many years, long before Putin - said, 'You could never have NATO involved with Ukraine.' Now, they've said that. That's been, like, written in stone," Trump said.
"And somewhere along the line Biden said, 'No. They should be able to join NATO.' Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that."
In other words, Russia was justified in invading and NATO basically gave Russia little alternative according to Trump.
Now why can we say that this is reflexive control—well its almost word for word an identical argument to that given by Putin to justify the invasion in the first place. Here was Putin in May 2022—saying that the invasion was the result of possible NATO expansion into Ukraine and that this was a threat with which Russia had to deal.
“The NATO bloc began actively trying to assimilate the territories adjacent to us by military means,” Putin said. “In this way, they began systematically creating an absolutely unacceptable threat and directly on our borders.
This week’s interjection was just the latest example of how Trump has internalized the Russian narrative. He has criticized Ukraine for being allowed to strike into Russia regularly in the past month. In December he even used Russian escalation framing exactly on this question.
"I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We're just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done,"
Again, Trump is using language that is identical to the Kremlin. Here was Putin’s spokesman in May 2024, just after Ukraine had been given a very limited ability to strike into Russia because of the Russian Kharkiv invasion (which was organized and launched from inside Russia—where Russian forces had a protected sanctuary because of the Biden Administration).
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Nato countries, especially the US and several European countries, had "entered a new round of escalating tension and they are doing this deliberately", in remarks quoted by the Tass news agency.
"They are in every possible way provoking Ukraine to continue this senseless war."
So, this week has confirmed that Trump has internalized Russian thinking on the war and international relations. It might help explain his very worrying position on alliances—which went into overdrive this week. In a (surprisingly sober) press conference in Mar-a-Lago this week, soon to be President Trump was asked about some earlier threats he had made to take over Greenland and Panama, and whether he would rule out using military or economic force to do so—and he refused to do that. According to Trump
And of course this was added to his threat (which has now been made numerous times) to incorporate Canada into the USA.
Why this is interesting is that Canada, Denmark/Greenland, and Panama are all US allies or host US forces. The US believed that its security could be assured through a working network of alliances (NATO, etc) in which other sovereign states pooled their military forces and diplomatic weight to achieve their goals.
The US under his lead seems decidedly anti-alliance. He doesn’t trust allies (sees them as freeloaders mostly), certainly doesn’t like allies, and even feels more than happy threatening allies with invasion. He regularly speaks far more warmly about the leadership of what even he says are threats to the USA (in the quotes about Greenland, for instance, he spoke about Chinese and Russian ships).
This week as well he demanded that NATO allies spend 5% of their GDP on defense. This is interesting as the US spends about 3% now and is trending lower.
Why this matters for Ukraine is that Trump, and those around him, are clearly positioning themselves as what might be called “brokers” between Russia and Ukraine, and not as supporters of Ukraine who will help the Ukrainians achieve a decent settlement.
Again, this could be seen as a sign of Trump adopting Russian thinking.
I say this because there is a large number of rumors swirling around about what Trump will do when he becomes president. Will he continue aid or not to Ukraine? What kind of security guarantees will he offer to Ukraine—if any? Will he lift sanctions on Russia soon or not? Personally, I try not to over-react to any specific rumor or story. What worries me is his way of thinking—which almost always reflects the Russian perspective when he speaks.
His instincts have been and remain pro-Putin—which this week confirmed.
Ukrainian Long-Range Strike
If Trump’s thinking is reflected in US policy—and we should assume it will soon be—there is a very high percentage chance that even the very limited permission that the Biden Administration has given Ukraine to strike targets in Russia with US systems, will be revoked. And if Trump revokes this right, I think we can count on Europeans going along as they will not wanting to anger him in the coming weeks (even as he emasculates them with invasion threats).
What this means is that Ukrainians will have to continue to grow their own long-range strike capacity materially and intellectually if they want to have any hope of changing the status quo in the war.
The issues that the Ukrainians have faced in this regard are ones of accuracy, mass and penetrating power. They have put together some very successful long-range strikes using their own systems, but they have still not shown the ability to wage a long-term ranged campaign—or to break through the hardest targets on their own (they often use US ATACMS or UK/FR Storm Shadows to attack Russian headquarters for instance.
This week there were examples that they were trying. There was a very long-range attack on the Russian Taneko oil refinery in Tartarstan. The Taneko refinery is located in the city of Nizhnekamsk, around 1,300 kilometers from inside Russia from Ukraine.
This is the second time this refinery—which is one of the newest and most important in Russia has been attacked. And what was interesting was that even with its importance and previous history of being attacked—the Ukrainians were able to get some systems in to hit it successfully.
Maybe the even more important attacks were not so-long range as this but did seem to show Ukrainian improvement in home-made systems and in complex operations. The first was an attack on a Russian UAV storage depot in Rostov. I don’t need to tell you how important Russian UAVs have been to their war effort—so needless to say it was a high value target.
What this attack seemed to involve was a combination operation. First simpler Ukrainian UAVs were sent in to divert Russian anti-air defenses, the phrase the Ukrainians used was “overloaded”, and then some modified Ukrainian Neptune missiles (originally land-sea anti ship system) followed up to penetrate the defenses and explode the depot.
If the Ukrainians cant get their hands on ATACMS or European-made systems for ranged attacks, they will really need to step up production of these Neptunes. It is at least a hoepful sign that they seem to be using them on defended targets in Russia.
Finally, there was another UAV strike on the Russian port of Novorossiysk, which is where most of the remaining Black Sea Fleet is based. A few things stand out. Even though this is a very high-value target and has been attacked before, local reports were that Russian air defense was not operating until the strikes hit.
So either Russian air defenses are really stretched or the Ukrainians found a way to deceive them.
Overall it was the kind of week that shows what Ukraine would like to do, and how they are going about it. These attacks show preparation, high-value targeting, the ability to surmount Russian air defense, etc. The fact that they could do three in a week is great. However, questions remains about whether they can actually carry out a true ranged campaign on their own. If Trump truly is operating under Russian reflexive control—that will be very difficult.
The Donbas and Kursk Battlefields—Little Substantive Change
Haven’t dwelled on the Donbas much lately as the changes there are pretty small. Russia is still a long-ways from taking Pokrovsk, which as you might recall the press was saying might fall in August 2024. There have been some advances to the South of the city, but these are extremely costly micro-advances writ large. Here is the situation right now according to Deep State.
And here is the situation on January 1, 2025.
All the talk about greatly accelerated Russian advances seem to have been toned down.
The situation in Kursk is likewise pretty static. The Ukrainians launched a brief spoiling attack a few days ago, and the Russians are desperately trying to retake the area. Its clear that Ukraine holding a chunk of Russia has screwed up Russian strategic calculations (and possibly Trump’s). As of now, however, Kursk remains pretty stable.
Of course what this ground war continues to show is that Ukraine needs to wage a ranged campaign to change the general dynamic of the war. The land-war is what it is—it wont change unless one side or the other really runs out of forces (which could happen eventually). If the war is going to see a major change—it will come from a successful Ukrainian ranged war. Which, of course, the Ukrainians understand—even if most people in the west dont.
Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.
A few weeks ago, I had a depressing insight into the fact that a war can die. To run through a few of the wars that the United States has participated in:
The Revolutionary War has never died. Its main effect the creation of the United States has been continuously embraced since 1776.
The Civil War died in the late 1870s. The North allowed the South to reimpose virtual slavery upon African Americans in southern states. The Civil War came back to life in the 1950s with the civil rights movement.
World War I with its principle of self-determination for every ethnic group— nationhood for Poland Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, etc.— is still basically alive. However the idea of a international body that could enforce global security has faltered in the form of the League of Nations and the United Nations.
World War II with its principle of no change in national boundaries by force used to be quite alive, but I now fear it is dying before our eyes. It has certainly died for the new American isolationist movement. Trump certainly does not believe in that principle. I think Trump would rather have a root canal than give further aid to Ukraine.
What do people mean when they talk about stopping aid? The final package has just been announced, and no more aid can be provided under the law. Nobody is even suggesting a new package in Congress. The aid has stopped, and there not even any plans to restart it. Trump does not actually have to do anything to end support for Ukraine - just refrain from asking the Congress for a new package.