Vladimir Putin’s government will lash out at Trump for his expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States.
While Trump’s decision is the right one for U.S. and NATO security, it has shocked Moscow and will infuriate Putin’s inner circle. Reflecting as much, the Russian ambassador to Washington reacted to the announcement by decrying a “very bad decision.”
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Still, the key here is that Putin believes he holds the leverage over Trump, which he can use to prevent U.S. actions that would cause significant harm to Russian interests. This diplomatic expulsion challenges that understanding.
After all, the removal of 60 SVR, FSB, and GRU officers will have no small impact on Russia’s ability to collect intelligence in the United States. While the Russian services are hyper-aggressive and hyper-paranoid and thus predisposed to poorly targeted and insufficiently secretive operations, this expulsion will mean lost experience, lost U.S.-based tradecraft skills, and the endangerment of U.S.-based agents.
Putin, the former KGB man, won’t like that one bit.
Yet it’s also crucial to assess Putin’s likely reaction in consideration of two other factors.
First, there’s the fact that Trump has now expelled nearly twice as many Russian intelligence officers as former President Barack Obama expelled (35) following Russia’s election hacking effort. The leader Putin hoped would enable Russian empowerment has now gutted Russia’s intelligence presence on U.S. soil.
Putin’s character (focused KGB aggression) and strategic orientation (bold pursuit of domination) will motivate him to strike back at Trump.
Next, there’s the template of Putin’s previous response to Trump’s enforcement of sanctions on Russia in August 2017. Then, deploying his primary sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin had Medvedev accuse Trump of being an “incompetent” leader defined by “impotence.” Medvedev, and thus Putin, even warned that Trump would be “liquidated” by the U.S. establishment.
All of this leads to one conclusion: how Putin will respond to these expulsions isn’t clear, but Trump will face Putin’s wrath.
At that point, Trump should push back even harder.
