The Guardian reports:

Donald Trump’s continuing lavish praise and support for Vladimir Putin are fueling alarm among former intelligence officials and other experts who fear another Trump presidency would benefit Moscow and harm American democracy and interests overseas.

Trump praised the Russian president as a “genius” and “pretty savvy” when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and has boasted he would end the war in a “day”, sparking critics’ fears that if he’s elected again Trump would help Russia achieve a favorable peace deal by cutting off aid to Kyiv. Trump also recently greenlit Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato members who don’t pay enough to the alliance.

“Trump views Putin as a strongman,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and a national security official in the first two years of Trump’s administration. “In a way they’re working in parallel because they’re both trying to weaken the US, but for very different reasons.”

More recently, instead of criticizing Putin for the death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure, who the Kremlin once tried to kill with poison, and who died suddenly last month in an Arctic penal colony, Trump weirdly equated the four criminal prosecutions he faces with Navalny’s fate.

“The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our country,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform

Trump’s adulation for autocrats was displayed again this month at Mar-a-Lago, where he hosted Viktor Orbán, the far-right Hungarian prime minister who is a close Putin ally and foe of Ukraine aid, whom Trump extolled. “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said.

In turn, Orbán lauded Trump as “a man of peace”, and said if Trump is re-elected, he “won’t give a penny” to Ukraine and the war will end. [Continue reading…]