The soul of Putin

“I won’t say so publicly, but this is the most important meeting of the trip. Everybody is watching.” With these words, American president George W. Bush opened his first face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin at Brdo castle in Slovenia 25 years ago today.

Bush was right: the world was watching. This was the first time the two had met in person since coming to power. Bush — the new leader of the free world — had been in the White House less than six months; Putin — president of a Russia still rebuilding itself less than a decade after the fall of communism — had sat in the Kremlin for just over a year. Both the Americans and Russians knew that the outcome of this meeting on 16 June 2001 between Bush and Putin would go on to define Russo-American relations in the years to come.

Lasting just over an hour and a half, the two presidents rattled through a tight agenda during their private conversation. Bush spoke of the threat coming from Iran, North Korea and China; Putin spoke about Pakistan, calling it a “junta with nuclear weapons”.

Much of what the two say to each other could as easily have been said yesterday as in 2001

Reading the transcript of Putin and Bush’s meeting, it is eerie to read the Russian president articulate the seeds of grievances that, over the ensuing quarter century, have taken root and bloomed into a multi-dimensional geopolitical crisis. Much of what the two say to each other could as easily have been said yesterday as in 2001. Particularly because, of the pair, one of them has kept his grip on power — albeit illegally.

Early on in their conversation, Bush made overtures to set Putin at ease: he didn’t want to “diminsh Russia,” he declared. “A strong Russia is in our interests.” The Russian president responded in a way that will be familiar to any Kremlin-watchers since then — with a history lesson:

What really happened? Soviet goodwill changed the world, voluntarily. And Russians gave up thousands of square kilometres of territory, voluntarily. Unheard of. Ukraine, part of Russia for centuries, given away. Kazakhstan, given away. The Caucasus, too. Hard to imagine, and done by party bosses.

Bush proceeded to suggest that Putin “ought to welcome Nato enlargement” as a means of stabilising Russia’s environs. At a remove of 25 years, Putin’s answer seems surprising: “I can imagine us becoming allies. Only dire need could make us allies with others. But’” he added, “we feel left out of Nato. If Russia is not part of this, of course it feels left out.”

These remarks offer a fascinating insight into the younger Putin’s mindset. The Russian president and former KGB agent’s bitterness over the collapse of the USSR was plain to see. A decade on, he clearly viewed Russia as unforgiveably weakened as a result. But did he also genuinely believe, back then, that Russia would or should have been able to join Nato? At what point did distrust and antipathy tip into the ‘dire need’ that has seen Russia once again rise at the West’s central antagonist?

All things considered, the two presidents got on better than expected that day in Slovenia. At a joint press conference afterwards, Bush said of Putin that “I looked the man in the eye. I found him very straightforward and trustworthy — I was able to get a sense of his soul.” His national security advisor Condoleezza Rice later reflected on Bush’s choice of words: “We were never able to escape the perception that the President had naïvely trusted Putin and then been betrayed.”

Following the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York less than three months later, Putin was the first foreign head of state to call Bush and offer his condolences. But the afterglow of the Slovenia summit was shortlived. Just over 18 months later, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, Putin condemned it as a “mistake” that would be “fraught with the gravest consequences”. His administration went on to accuse America of influencing Georgia’s Rose revolution later that year, and Ukraine’s Orange revolution the year after.

By 2008, trust between America and Russia had broken down to the degree that — in an inversion of current events — Bush was pushing for Ukraine and Georgia to be granted membership of Nato. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko (incidentally, still in post now) said that granting them membership would be “a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security”. It was only a veto from Germany and France at that year’s Nato summit in Bucharest that prevented Ukraine and Georgia’s accession; then, as now, Russia’s threats were enough to spook Europe out of providing adequate support for Ukraine.

Despite an attempted “reset” of relations at the start of Barack Obama’s first term in 2009 — during which Dmitry Medvedev was subbed into the role of Russian president to help Putin circumvent rules around consecutive terms in office — it took less than two years for the White House to do away with diplomatic pleasantries when it came to dealing with the Kremlin. Joe Biden later told a journalist that on a March 2011 trip to Moscow, during his time as Obama’s vice president, he had told Putin: “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” According to Biden, Putin smiled and replied, “We understand one another.”

Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, followed eight years later by the full-scale assault on Ukraine, definitively cast Moscow into the cold and turned Putin into a global pariah. During his time as president, Biden threw great economic and political resources at funding Kyiv’s resistance against the invading Russian forces.

But with Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year, Putin had high hopes of this changing. The Kremlin had helped the president to power once before in 2016: US intelligence identified orders to conduct electoral interference in that year’s presidential election as having been given by Putin himself. Now, the Russian president was hoping for payback.

The culmination of this thawing in Russo-American relations came last August during an ill-advised meeting between Putin and Trump in Anchorage, Alaska. This was the first time the two had met since 2019; Trump quite literally had a red carpet rolled out to meet his Russian counterpart. With the US President having consistently pressured Ukraine to come to the negotiating table and cede territory to Moscow, the Russians had been hoping to secure an easy win during the summit.

And yet it appears that Putin couldn’t resist the urge to lecture Trump on Russian history, declaring Ukraine and Russia to be “one nation” and demanding he be handed over swathes of Ukraine’s territory. Trump in return reportedly raised his voice, cancelled the working lunch that was supposed to follow and beat a hasty retreat to Washington. Ukraine and Russia remain at war, and Trump has seemingly lost any interest in forcing the two into an uneasy peace.

With the luxury of hindsight, it is clear that the man who met with Bush is little different than the man who stood grinning smugly next to Trump in front of the world’s cameras last year

In the past 25 years, Putin has encountered four different presidents of the United States. And yet, with the luxury of hindsight, it is clear that the man who met with Bush is little different than the man who stood grinning smugly next to Trump in front of the world’s cameras last year. Bolder, perhaps, and more paranoid — but just as cruel and bitter. Like Bush before him, Trump has repeatedly claimed to have seen the truth of Putin’s soul. Unlike Bush, Trump may not have the humility to admit that he too is being betrayed.