Veselnitskaya is definitely expendable. I actually wrote this to Josh a long while back that she would become expendable for Putin at some point. For Vladimir, the Trump relationship was always transactional and measured by a cost benefit analysis. It was a very low cost to help Trump win the election with a high payoff. The worst that would’ve happened to Putin had HRC won is more sanctions. With Trump as POTUS, Vladimir has been angling to get his wish list done: weaken or break up NATO, get control of Syria, swing North Korea out of the American orbit, lift sanctions, build ties with Arab elites to expand the use of nuclear power and the Russian footprint there, and just piss off Americans for his amusement.
If you look at this list, the results have been a mixed bag. He can definitely claim success in NK. There can be little doubt that Russia played its part to juice Kim’s nuclear program to put him in a position to successfully blackmail and break apart the US-Asian alliance. But now the ball is in the hands of the South Korean government and they are moving as quickly as they can to cut their own deal with Kim, allow him to stay as a totalitarian, nuclear power and cease hostilities while angling for a reduction in US troop presence. Mission accomplished.
On NATO - while Trump whines about it, Mattis has been pretty strong at stopping Trump from messing with the alliance. Macron has also taken on a leadership role to hold the alliance together and to be the new alpha dog of NATO. On that one, mission not accomplished.
Syria - This was probably the single greatest tragic consequence of HRC not winning the election. Within days of Trump’s victory, Putin flattened Aleppo and has continued to advance Assad’s total control of the country. While Assad has inflicted a lot of pain and tragedy he does not yet have full political control and even less legitimacy. That said, the US has no effective counterweight there because Trump keeps diminishing the Kurds, enables Putin to crush the moderate Sunni opposition, and the Al-Qaeda/Al Nusra/ISIS guys are in the tank with Putin. Yet, Mattis has stuck around in Syria and has kept a foothold there. Here, I’d say Mission advanced but not yet complete. But Syria is a basket case of a country that costs a lot to manage, so is that really ‘winning’? I just feel for the people of Syria, whose future would be so much brighter had Hillary won. She had a clear idea of how she was going to deal with the Russians there. Trump has none, and he’s letting ISIS back into the game in Iraq and Syria. This is a tragedy with long-term consequences. On this one, the results are inconclusive and the benefits may be outweighed by the costs.
Lifting Sanctions - Trump has been an abysmal failure here. This has to annoy Putin greatly.
Building Arab Ties - Without lifting sanctions, Russia can’t get into the game. Trump has been milking the Arab contacts in UAE and Saudi Arabia for his own financial benefit, but it’s not advancing Putin’s agenda particularly well. Mission not accomplished.
Russia is getting an edge in Afghanistan, but he can’t quite get Trump to withdraw troops. Then there’s the blowback risk on Iran, the curbs on the oligarchs, additional sanctions and Magnitsky style acts popping up everywhere, and international ostracism. Within Russia, I suspect the consensus view is that Trump isn’t worth it. You hear those comments poke through the state owned media every now and then. That drumbeat could be growing louder.
One could make a reasonable argument from a Russian nationalist perspective that Trump has outlived his usefulness. The decision is in Putin’s hands, but one has to wonder if Putin senses that he can only go so far with Trump and still maintain legitimacy at home.
