Author Luke Harding Probes Why Trump Defers to Putin
In a new book, journalist Luke Harding examines ideology, envy and alleged Kremlin leverage as explanations for Trump's deferential stance toward Russia's president.
A new book by journalist Luke Harding, Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest, has reignited debate over President Donald Trump's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, after a Guardian review of the book asked whether Trump could be a "Russian asset."
Harding, a former Guardian Moscow bureau chief, writes that Trump's behavior toward Putin in his second term has echoed the "weird and perplexing" conduct of his first. He points to last year's Alaska summit, where Trump applauded Putin, rolled out a red carpet, and let the Russian leader speak first at their joint news conference — what Harding calls "a bizarre act of deference."
Harding lays out several overlapping theories. One is ideological: Trump's Maga base views Russia as an "anti-woke" ally, a framing Putin has encouraged by portraying himself as a defender of conservative values against a "decadent and godless Europe." Former White House adviser Fiona Hill has suggested "strongman envy" — that Trump admires Putin's freedom to make money and suppress opponents, in contrast to his frequent criticism of European leaders including former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
A third theory involves kompromat, potentially compromising material gathered during Trump's decades of travel to Russia, including a 1987 trip organized by a Soviet state agency and a 2013 visit for the Miss Universe pageant. A 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee report alleged the FSB had hidden cameras in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton where Trump stayed. Harding writes that whatever the tapes show, "Putin knows what they show, and Trump knows that Putin knows."
Chess champion Garry Kasparov, cited in the book, argues the label matters less than the outcome: since 2025, Trump has halted direct US military aid to Kyiv, criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, and repeated Kremlin talking points. Harding, who has reported extensively from Ukraine, notes that Kyiv still lacks sufficient US-made Patriot interceptors to counter nightly Russian drone and missile bombardments, which he says continue to kill civilians.
Betrayal is published this week in Denmark, with Italian, Finnish and Ukrainian editions to follow, and is also available in the UK through Guardian Faber.
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