\n<\/p>\n
When the nation\u2019s intelligence chiefs go before Congress on Tuesday to provide their first public \u201cWorldwide Threat Assessment\u201d of President Trump\u2019s second term, they\u2019ll face an extraordinary choice.<\/p>\n
Do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and \u201cundermine the United States and the West?\u201d<\/p>\n
Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?<\/p>\n
The vexing choice has become all the more stark in recent days since Steve Witkoff, one of Mr. Trump\u2019s oldest friends from the real estate world and his chosen envoy to the Mideast and Russia, has begun picking up many of Mr. Putin\u2019s favorite talking points.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Witkoff wrote off European fears that Russia could violate whatever cease-fire is agreed upon and a peacekeeping force must be assembled to deter Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said the peacekeeping idea was \u201ca combination of a posture and a pose\u201d by America\u2019s closest NATO allies.<\/p>\n
It is a view, he said, that was born of a \u201csort of notion of we\u2019ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe.\u201d He continued: \u201cI think that\u2019s preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just over three years after Russian troops poured into Kyiv and tried to take out the government, Mr. Witkoff argued that Mr. Putin doesn\u2019t really want to take over all of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would they want to absorb Ukraine?\u201d he asked Mr. Carlson. \u201cFor what purpose, exactly? They don\u2019t need to absorb Ukraine.\u201d All Russia seeks, he argues, is \u201cstability there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he was straight up with me,\u201d Mr. Witkoff said of Mr. Putin, a striking characterization of a longtime U.S. adversary, and master of deception, who repeatedly told the world he had no intention of invading Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Of all the head-spinning reversals in Washington these days, perhaps it is the Trump administration\u2019s view of Russia and its seeming willingness to believe Mr. Putin that leave allies, intelligence officials and diplomats most disoriented.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Until Mr. Trump took office, it was the consensus view of the United States and its allies that they had been hopelessly na\u00efve about Russia\u2019s true ambitions for far too long \u2014 that they had failed to listen carefully to Mr. Putin when he first argued, in 2007, that there were parts of Russia that needed to be restored to the motherland. Then he invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and sent the military \u2014 out of uniform \u2014 to conduct a guerrilla war in the Donbas.<\/p>\n
Still, sanctions were slow to be applied, and Europe was far too slow to rearm \u2014 a point Mr. Trump himself makes when he presses the Europeans for more funds to defend themselves.<\/p>\n
Now, Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge the obvious, that Russia invaded Ukraine. He has been openly contradicted by several European leaders, who say that even if the United States plans to seek a normalization of relations with Russia, they do not. \u201cI don\u2019t trust Putin,\u201d the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told The New York Times last week<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m sure Putin would try to insist that Ukraine should be defenseless after a deal because that gives him what he wants, which is the opportunity to go in again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But for the American intelligence agencies, whose views are supposed to be rooted in a rigorous analysis of covertly collected and open-source analysis, there is no indication so far that any of their views about Mr. Putin and his ambitions have changed. So it will be up to the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the new C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, to walk the fine line of describing Russia as a current adversary and future partner.<\/p>\n Mr. Witkoff headed down that road in his conversation with Mr. Carlson. \u201cShare sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on A.I. together,\u201d he said, after imagining a negotiated cease-fire in which Russia gets to hold the lands it now occupies and gets assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO. \u201cWho doesn\u2019t want to see a world like that?\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the chamber\u2019s Intelligence Committee, said comments by Mr. Witkoff and others in the Trump administration are deeply disorienting to American spies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf you grew up in the intelligence community knowing all the awful things Vladimir Putin had done and all of a sudden you have a change in posture where you completely take Russia\u2019s side, how do you make sense of that?\u201d Mr. Warner said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Warner said the document that the intelligence community will unveil on Tuesday, its annual threat assessment, is very traditional and in keeping with previous versions of it. But what Mr. Trump\u2019s intelligence leaders will say in testimony is not as clear. So far, Mr. Warner said, the administration\u2019s comments on Ukraine have reflected anything but the traditional view of the threat from Russia.<\/p>\n The shifting American policy on Russia, Mr. Warner said, threatens intelligence partnerships. While America collects far more intelligence than other countries, he said, the combined contributions of key allies are substantial. And if their concerns about American policy and its faithful analysis of intelligence grow, they will share less.<\/p>\n Officials of several allies, while declining to speak on the record, pointed to several of Mr. Witkoff\u2019s statements with alarm, saying they closely reflected Russian talking points. He endorsed Russian \u201creferendums\u201d in four key Ukrainian provinces that were widely viewed as rigged<\/a>, with voters threatened with torture and deportation if they cast their ballot the wrong way. But Mr. Witkoff spoke as if they were legitimate elections.<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,\u201d he said. Shortly afterward, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, said on Monday that Mr. Witkoff should be removed from his position.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are simply disgraceful, shocking statements,\u201d Mr. Merezhko told Ukrainian media. \u201cHe is relaying Russian propaganda. And I have a question: Who is he? Is he Trump\u2019s envoy, or maybe he\u2019s Putin\u2019s envoy?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was more circumspect in an interview with Time magazine released on Monday. He said he believed \u201cRussia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information.\u201d Earlier, he had talked about the \u201cweb of disinformation\u201d surrounding Mr. Trump, saying it contributed to their famously poor relationship.<\/p>\n He noted that Mr. Trump had repeated Mr. Putin\u2019s claim that retreating Ukrainian forces in western Russia had been encircled.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a lie,\u201d Mr. Zelensky said.<\/p>\n Constant M\u00e9heut contributed reporting from Kyiv.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n