by Stefano Caprio

Between the Trumpian Maga of America first and the Putinian dream of Russkij Mir there is much harmony in the post-globalist vision of the world, which in the coming decades will be dominated by a tyrannical, threatening, imperial and colonial neo-sovereignism, in which the most expendable part is not so much Ukraine, but the whole of Europe.

As was easily foreseeable, the inauguration of Donald Trump's US presidency has provoked a wave of enthusiasm in Russia, beyond the threats of ‘new sanctions’ on Moscow if it does not stop waging war in Ukraine, which from the Kremlin were immediately downgraded to ‘business as usual’, recalling that Trump has ‘liked these methods’ since his first term.

The decidedly Putin-like tones of the first official speech of the former new president were expected to declaim to the world the principles of sovereignty against globalisation, of the defence of one's own identity against foreign invasions, of the universal mission of the American people for the salvation of the world, the same and identical contents of the ideology of the ‘Russian world’ in its mirror version of the ‘American world’.

Particularly appreciated by the Russians were Donald the Terrible's words on the existence of ‘only two sexes, the male and the female’, one of the qualifying points of the ‘defence of traditional values’ that motivated the invasion of Ukraine itself: ‘otherwise they will force us to go to gay parades’, said Patriarch Kirill of Moscow a week after Russian troops entered to conquer Kiev.

One of his trusted associates, the head of the patriarchate's synodal department Vakhtang Kipšidze, spoke of ‘the arrival of the US into the space of traditional values, at least in words, becoming a major area of competition’ in which Russia is committed to act with conviction, believing it to be ‘the biggest blow against the globalists in the last 30 years’.

Another statement by Trump, however, annoyed the Russians when the US president spoke of the USSR's ‘auxiliary role’ in World War II, boasting of the victory achieved by the American and British armies. For the Russians, Victory was only attributable to Stalinist troops, and if anything, it was the West that provided secondary help with the landings in Normandy and Sicily.

In any case, Putin has invited Trump to Moscow on 9 May for the 80th anniversary celebrations of the great Victory, where the tsar also intends to celebrate the success of the special operation in Ukraine thanks to the peace talks, which will be carried out with the Americans ‘in equal dignity and respect’, i.e. sacrificing Ukraine on the Kremlin's altar.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov recalled that between America and Europe ‘the ocean stretches, and so it was also at the time of the war’, and the great war scene with ‘tens of millions of victims took place on the continent opposite America’. The division of camps and roles is one of the fundamental principles of the new world order dreamt up by Putin, the ‘multipolar’ one that sees Russia as the one true pivot of all relations (Eurasia being bordered by China and facing America from the Far East).

And the memory of the 20th century wars describes the current picture much more effectively than any geographical or digital dimension, being in fact a spiritual projection rather than a political or economic reality.

The dream of a ‘new Yalta’, with the division of the world between East and West, is beginning to take shape under Trump's presidency, as can also be deduced from the Washington emperor's statements at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where it was proclaimed that ‘work on a peaceful settlement of the war conflict between Russia and Ukraine has already begun’.

Trump also noted that oil prices are still too high, allowing Russia to finance the war, calling on major producers such as Saudi Arabia and Opec countries to increase production in order to bring prices down so as to end the conflicts.

Currently, oil remains at per barrel, and despite the caps and restrictions imposed, Russia continues to fuel its war economy through the ‘shadow fleet’ and the alternative market, which have so far made sanctions rather ineffective. During Trump's speech, the price has already dropped by about a dollar, but it will take more than that to really bring the Russian economy to its knees.

The American president put a lot of emphasis on the relationship between Washington and Riyadh, which plans to invest some USD 600 billion in the US, although in Trump's vision ‘this figure will have to be rounded up to 1000, because the Americans have been very understanding with Saudi Arabia’.

These are speeches consistent with the new ‘cold war’, which seem to threaten Moscow, but in reality recognise the Russians as playing a decisive role in the division of world spheres of influence. Of course, Trump has reiterated that he intends to meet Vladimir Putin ‘in the near future’, the decisive summit that everyone has been waiting for for months, and which now seems close to being realised.

The Kremlin reports that in the meantime, Putin is expected to give an interview to 42-year-old blogger Lex Fridman, one of the world's most popular YouTube channels. Fridman is an ethnic Ukrainian Jew, born in Soviet Tajikistan under the name Aleksej Fedotov, raised in Moscow where he completed his studies and son of a famous Kiev physicist, Aleksandr Fridman, who later moved to the US to Philadelphia and became director of the Plasma Institute at Drechsel University.

His guests include Elon Musk, Trump himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Argentinean Javier Milei (who exulted at the ‘world sovereignist front’ being created around Trump), Volodymyr Zelenskyj and many other leading figures in international politics and economics, who are only missing Putin to finish the review, and provide the necessary responses to Trump's invitations and provocations.

In the meantime, the Russians are gearing up to take advantage of the upcoming electoral appointments, first of all the vote in Belarus that will confirm the eternal presidency of Aleksandr Lukašenko, whose mission that began in 1994 will have to end for the Kremlin with the definitive proclamation of the Unitary State of Moscow and Minsk, to which Kiev will sooner or later also be annexed.

The opportunity to interfere with the vote in Germany on 23 February next is very tempting, where the Russian dezinformatsija is active at the highest level, with a flurry of posts on X accusing the Greens of Germany's economic problems, criticising outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his support for Ukraine.

The Russian hybrid warfare campaign Doppelgänger, already denounced by German, US and French authorities, is increasingly turning in support of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party and against the traditional German parties, in order to gain another pillar of Putinist sovereignty in the heart of Europe.

A crucial role is entrusted to former US deputy John Mark Dougan, who fled the US and became a Kremlin propagandist, coordinating a network of 102 German-language sites that amplify pro-Russian narratives a month before the election.

Trump has also already set the date for the end of the conflict in Ukraine, 30 April 2025, one hundred days after his inauguration, instead of the promised ‘twenty-four hours’. There will be frozen Russian remittances to be divided, part of which will go for the reconstruction of Ukraine and part will return to Russian bank assets stranded in the West. In the usual late-medieval refrain of the ‘war of duties’, then, the terms of the new fields of geopolitics and geo-economics will be highlighted, assigning the roles of friend and foe in the trenches of international markets.

Between the Trumpian Maga ofAmerica first and the Putin dream of Russkij Mir there is much harmony in the post-globalist vision of the world, which in the coming decades will be dominated by autarchic and threatening neo-sovereignism, imperial and colonial, in which the most expendable part is not so much Ukraine, but the whole of Europe, considering not only the two poles of the US and Russia, but also the variable ones of China, Turkey and India.

Nato's new secretary general, the Dutch Mark Rutte, calls for ‘prolonging the war to let Ukraine win’, but this does not seem to be the view of Trump, who intends to share Ukraine with Putin for the sake of White House interests, combined with those of the Kremlin. ‘The golden age has begun,’ Trump proclaimed in a Davos connection, assuring that “Kiev is ready to make a deal,” and shortly afterwards Putin interrupted a Moscow government meeting for an “international telephone conversation of the utmost importance,” as spokesman Dmitry Peskov clarified, without revealing who the interlocutor was. The tsar and the emperor are sharing the world, and everyone else is watching.

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