Is Russia an opponent or future partner? Trump helpers may have to decide.

When the heads of the nation’s intelligence pass in front of the congress Tuesday to provide their first “world evaluation of threats” of the second mandate of President Trump, they will have to face an extraordinary choice.

They attach themselves to their long conclusion on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and “undermine the United States and the West?”

Or did Mr. Putin launched Mr. Trump and his best negotiator with Russia are describing him in these days: as a reliable future business partner who simply wants to end a bad war, get control of parts of Ukraine who are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?

The irritating choice has become even more clear in the last few days since Steve Witkoff, one of the oldest friends of Mr. Trump in the real estate world and his correspondent chosen in the Middle East and Russia, began to collect many of Mr. Putin’s favorite discussion points.

Mr. Witkoff canceled the European fears that Russia could violate any ceased the fire is agreed and that a peace maintenance force must be assembled to dissuade Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-Maga podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said that the idea of ​​maintaining peace was “a combination of a posture and a” allies of NATO’s allies in America.

It is a point of view, he said, that he was born from a “notion of which we are all like Winston Churchill, the Russians are marching in Europe”. He continued: “I think it is absurd.”

Just over three years after the Russian troops poured into Kiev and tried to eliminate the government, Witkoff claimed that Mr. Putin does not really want to take all Ukraine.

“Why should they want to absorb Ukraine?” He asked Mr. Carlson. “For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine.” All Russia seeks, supports, it is “stability there”.

“I thought it was immediately with me,” said Witkoff by Mr. Putin, a surprising characterization of a long -standing American opponent, and Master of Deception, which repeatedly said to the world that he had no intention of invading Ukrainian.

Of all the spine inversions in Washington in these days, perhaps it is the opinion of the Trump administration on Russia and its apparent will to believe to Mr. Putin who leave more disoriented allies, intelligence and diplomatic officials.

Until Mr. Trump entered office, it was the vision of the consent of the United States and his allies who had been irreparably naive on the real ambitions of Russia for too long – who had not been able to carefully listen to Mr. Putin when he supported for the first time, in 2007, that there were parts of Russia who had to rest in the motherland. Then he invaded Georgia, Annete Crimea and sent the military – for uniform – to conduct a guerrilla war in Donbas.

However, the sanctions were slow to be applied and Europe was too slow to regain it – a point that Mr. Trump himself does when he presses the Europeans for several funds to defend themselves.

Now, Trump refuses to recognize the obvious that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It has been openly contradicted by several European leaders, who say that even if the United States intends to seek normalization of relations with Russia, they do not do it. “I don’t trust Putin”, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, He told the New York Times last week. “I am sure that Putin would try to insist on the fact that Ukraine should be defenseless after an agreement because this gives him what he wants, that it is the opportunity to trace.”

But for American intelligence agencies, whose opinions should be rooted in a rigorous analysis of the analysis of the hidden and open source, so far there is no indication that one of their opinions on Mr. Putin and its ambitions has changed. It will therefore be up to the new director of the national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the new director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, travel the subtle line to describe Russia as a current opponent and a future partner.

Mr. Witkoff headed along that road in his conversation with Mr. Carlson. “Share the marine lanes, maybe send a GNL gas in Europe together, perhaps they collaborate in the AI ​​together,” he said, after imagining a ceased the negotiated fire in which Russia can keep the lands he now occupies and ensures that Ukraine will never join NATO. “Who doesn’t want to see such a world?”

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the democratic ranking of the Chamber’s Intelligence Committee, said that Mr. Witkoff’s comments and others in the Trump administration are deeply disorienting for the American spies.

“If you grew up in the intelligence community knowing all the terrible things that Vladimir Putin had done and suddenly you have a change in the posture in which you completely take the part of Russia, how do you say a sense?” Mr. Warner said.

Warner said that the document that the intelligence community will present on Tuesday, its annual evaluation of the threats, is very traditional and in line with the previous versions. But what the leaders of Trump’s intelligence will say in the testimony is not so clear. So far, said Warner, the comments of the administration on Ukraine have reflected anything except the traditional vision of the threat from Russia.

The changing American politics on Russia said Warner, threatens intelligence partnerships. While America collects much more intelligence than other countries, he said, the combined contributions of the key allies are substantial. And if their concerns about American politics and its faithful analysis of intelligence grow, they will share less.

Officials of several allies, while refusing to speak in the news, they underlined some of the statements of Mr. Witkoff with alarm, saying that they closely reflect the Russian discussion points. Approved the Russian “referendums” in four key Ukrainian provinces that were widely seen as makeupWith the voters threatened with torture and deportations if they voted in the wrong way. But Mr. Witkoff spoke as if they were legitimate elections.

“There were referendums in which the vast majority of the people indicated that they want to be under Russian domination,” he said. Shortly thereafter, Oleksandr Merezhko, the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, said Monday that Mr. Witkoff should be removed from his position.

“These are simply shameful and shocking statements,” Merezhko said to the Ukrainian media. “He is transmitting Russian propaganda. And I have a question: who is it? Is Trump’s correspondent, or is he the Putin correspondent?”

Ukraine’s Volodymy Zelensky President Volodymyr Zelensky was more opposed to an interview with Time Magazine published on Monday. He said he believed that “Russia managed to influence some people in the White House team through information”. Previously, he spoke of the “disinformation network” that surrounds Mr. Trump, saying that he contributed to their notoriously scarce relationship.

He observed that Mr. Trump had repeated the affirmation of Mr. Putin according to which the retreat of Ukrainian forces in western Russia had been surrounded.

“It was a lie,” said Zelensky.

Constant meheut Reports contributed by Kiev.