In order to answer it, all we need to do is to look at what Trump does; it’s not imperative (though it would be nice) to know why he is doing it.

By Paul Niland

May 1, 2026

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the end of a joint press conference after participating in a US-Russia summit on Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Aug. 15, 2025. (Photo by Drew ANGERER / AFP)

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[UPDATED: May 5, 11:12 am , Kyiv time. Corrected to include the missing bullet points due to technical errors]

It’s a question that has been asked many times and by many people. Is the President of the United States a Russian asset?

In looking for an answer, many folks blur what the question means. Does this mean that we know, that we can prove, that Trump was at some point recruited by Russian intelligence services? Do we know, and can we prove, whether he is or has been at some point in the past financially incentivized to act in Russia’s interests? Do we know, do we have details of, how Mr. Trump might have been compromised one way or another and is now being forced to acquiesce to Moscow’s demands as a result?

Those are a lot of questions, the wrong questions. We don’t need to know any of that. If we look at the basic premise of the question, in order to answer it, all we need to do is to look at what Trump does; it’s not imperative (though it would be nice) to know why he is doing it.

There are two keys to answering this question. The first is to ignore the distractions of the (presently, at least partially) unknowns, the “what is motivating these actions?”

The second key is the basic understanding of what an “asset” is. An asset is a resource that provides benefits. We can come back to the question of motivations, those things can and will be investigated and exposed, we hope. The only thing we need to look at to understand that, yes, indeed, Donald Trump is a Russian asset is whether he acts in a way that meets the definition of a resource that provides benefits. So, we just have to look at what he’s done.

Since Trump was reinstalled as the US president, US aid to Ukraine has reduced by 99%.

Let’s start with the most recent example of Donald Trump backing Putin’s call for a temporary ceasefire covering Victory Day. This proposal came out of a 90-minute discussion between the two Presidents and offers no benefit to anyone other than the dictator in the Kremlin, who wants to hold his parade on Red Square without any embarrassing incidents like Ukrainian drones messing up the propaganda show.

There’s nothing reciprocal here. There’s certainly no benefit to the United States here. Has Donald Trump just acted as a resource to seek benefits for Russia? Yes.

Let’s move on to more serious questions. Since Trump was reinstalled as the US president, US aid to Ukraine has reduced by 99%. There are many arguments that have been used to justify this move, none of which stack up under scrutiny. A key one being that if Ukraine no longer has the weapons needed to fight this war, then the war will end.

You know who has never backed that position, signaled that he’d end the war if Ukraine stopped fighting? Vladimir Putin. If you want the war to stop (and believe me, every single person in Ukraine wants the war to stop!), then that’s something that both warring parties have to agree to. The Trump Administration has failed to secure such promises from the Kremlin.

Let’s also look at the notion that a peace deal is possible if Ukraine agrees to withdraw from the parts of the Donbas still under government control.

A good time to remember, an asset is a resource that provides benefits.

Setting aside the fact that nobody from the Ukrainian side believes that would end the war, even though it may pause it for a while, and setting aside the fact that nobody has credibly attempted to justify why Russia should be allowed to control that part of Ukraine either, here’s why this demand is beneficial only to the killer in the Kremlin.

1. The Russian war in the Donbas has been ongoing since 2014. Though the front lines were relatively stable, fighting there never stopped, and as a result, Ukraine has built extensive defensive fortifications behind that line of contact. Handing the remainder of the Donetsk province to Russia simply allows them to bypass those fortifications. If Russia can, at the insistence of Donald Trump, bypass those fortifications, then that would open up more direct access to the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine, leaving them vulnerable to attack in a future phase of the war.
2. If Russia were forced to fight for control of the rest of the Donbas, military analysts universally agree that the fight would come at enormous cost to the Russian side, in particular because of the aforementioned defensive lines. While the 1.3 million casualties sustained by Russia so far have not been sufficient for them to call their war off, the additional 1 million troops they’d lose in that fight – likely to take another two years – that might finally cause the Russian population to conclude they need to replace the monster that has governed over them for the last quarter of a century.

A good time to remember, an asset is a resource that provides benefits.

Another way in which President Trump is acting in the interests of Russia, and is therefore a Russian asset by definition, is his oft-stated and long-standing animosity towards NATO. This one, though, has a longer tale to it that needs closer examination.

Back in September of 1987, the businessman Donald Trump spent $100,000 of (apparently) his own money (seems unlike him) on newspaper adverts to rail against NATO allies. For context, Trump had just returned from a business trip exploring real estate development opportunities in Moscow.

This now brings us neatly back to the question, in the way it is most commonly considered, of whether Trump is a Russian asset. By which I mean, is he somehow compromised, or has he been financially incentivized to adopt his very obvious pro-Russian positions?

The KGB, and the FSB that succeeded it but really only got a name change, has long had a policy of collecting compromising materials on high-value subjects. The practice is so common for them that we, they, even have a name for it.

Kompromat.

If you are wondering whether the Russian security services collected compromising materials on Donald Trump on his first or subsequent visits to Russia, wonder no more, simple logic can explain this one.

In 2013, at the invitation of a Russian oligarch, Trump took his Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow.

If the Russians had NOT tried to honey trap Donald Trump, they would have had to have simply NOT applied one of their most famous and successful ways of exerting control over someone they wished to blackmail. They would have been negligent in their duties. They, the FSB/KGB, would have had to decide to ignore their standard operating procedures. Who thinks that’s likely?If, maybe, you think that it’s remotely possible that there was no effort to get, or no success in getting, compromising material on Trump on that early trip to Moscow, consider the following sequence of events.

In a 2002 article about Jeffrey Epstein for New Yorker magazine, Trump said: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy… He likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Following that, in June 2008, Epstein was jailed for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

In 2013, at the invitation of a Russian oligarch, Trump took his Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow. If the Russians failed to attempt to entice Trump into compromising circumstances on this occasion, they’d have failed in their basic due diligence too.

Since then, Trump has claimed that on that trip, Vladimir Putin sent him not only a present, but a “beautiful present.” He has never elaborated on what that present was. Only that it was “beautiful.”

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.