Trump has record of siding with Putin on key issues

Associated Press

MOSCOW

Donald Trump has refused to condemn Russia’s military takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, saying if elected he would consider recognizing it as Russian territory, in the latest of a series of statements that have raised eyebrows about the Republican candidate’s intentions toward the Kremlin.

“We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

Accepting Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea would be a radical departure from U.S. policy. The U.S. and the European Union worked together to punish Russia by imposing economic sanctions and have shown no willingness to lift them. Even Belarus, Russia’s closest ally and neighbor, did not recognize the annexation.

Though Trump has sided with Putin on a wide range of issues, Putin has not openly backed the Republican nominee, and the Kremlin denies interfering in the U.S. electoral process. Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers as part of an effort to undermine her candidacy.

Although the Russians “will keep their mouths tightly zipped until Election Day,” they clearly prefer Trump, said Wayne Merry, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and former diplomat who spent six years at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

“They don’t know exactly what to expect from Donald Trump, but they think two things about him: One, that he has a number of advisers who they see as being relatively open-minded if not sympathetic about Russia. And second, they see him as a deal maker,” Merry said.

“When they look at Hillary Clinton, they see somebody they really do not like.”

On the personal level, Clinton is not the type of leader that Putin likes to deal with, said Mikhail Zygar, a Russian journalist and author of “All the Kremlin’s Men.”

Here is a look at some of the issues where the views of Putin and Trump coincide:

NATO and the Baltics: NATO’s eastward expansion has long been a sore spot for Putin, who has accused the Western military alliance and the U.S. of violating what he said were informal agreements not to encroach upon Russia’s borders. Trump has suggested that under his leadership, the U.S. might abandon its NATO military commitments.

Syria: Putin is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has been accused of targeting civilians in Syria’s ongoing civil war. Western nations including the U.S. insist that as part of a political transition, Assad should step aside. Trump has expressed his opposition to regime change in Syria and said the U.S. and Russia should focus on working together to destroy the Islamic State group.

Brexit: On the morning after Britain voted last month to leave the European Union, Putin sought to sound neutral, warning of the “traumatic effect” of the vote. Russia watchers believe that Moscow wants Britain to leave the EU. Trump, however, saluted the British vote, saying “they took back their country, it’s a great thing.”