The CIA assessment was blunt. There was no assassination attempt. No evidence that Ukraine targeted Putin or any of his residences. No corroboration for the dramatic tale Moscow pushed. That matters, because this was not a Ukrainian denial or a media rebuttal, but a cold intelligence judgement delivered after Putin had personally briefed the US President.
Trump did not approach the claim as a hostile sceptic. He listened. He reacted as if it might be true. He did the one thing Putin endlessly complains Western leaders never do - he trusted him. And then US intelligence checked the story and quietly dismantled it. At that point the issue stopped being geopolitics and became credibility. Putin was not being contradicted by enemies, but corrected after speaking directly to a president inclined to believe him.
This is not an isolated episode. Election interference. Pre invasion troop movements. Now a phantom assassination plot. Each time, Putin offers an assurance or a claim to someone open to taking him at his word. Each time, the claim fails contact with reality. The effect is cumulative and corrosive. Putin is not being argued with. He is being exposed as someone who squanders trust when it is extended in good faith.
Here is the unintended consequence. Trump’s much criticised weakness - his instinctive credulity, his preference for personal assurance over process - is actually working in Ukraine’s favour. Because he believes first, the system is forced to check. Because he speaks publicly, the check becomes visible. And because he pivots without embarrassment when trust is shown to be misplaced, Russian narratives collapse in the open rather than being quietly filed away. Ukraine does not need to persuade Trump. Reality does it for them.
The irony is that a more sceptical president might have spared Putin this. Private disbelief can be smoothed over. Public belief followed by public reversal cannot. Trump’s habit of repeating what he is told, then discarding it when it no longer serves him, strips away diplomatic cushioning. It leaves the person who misled him naked. A man who lies to his enemies can posture. A man who lies to someone who wanted to believe him looks reckless and unbankable.
We have seen this pattern repeatedly in Trump’s dealings with others. Jeff Sessions was trusted until he followed the law, at which point trust became betrayal. Comey was trusted until he refused personal loyalty. Tillerson was trusted until he applied restraint. Bill Barr was trusted until he told an inconvenient truth about the election. Michael Cohen was trusted until he stopped absorbing risk. In every case, trust was personal, intuitive, and conditional. Once it proved misplaced, Trump did not quietly adjust. He pivoted and moved on.
Marjorie Taylor Greene fits the same mould. She was trusted while she functioned as a loyal instrument. The moment she freelanced, made herself the story, or became unreliable to Trump’s interests, the trust cooled. Not with a dramatic rupture, but with distance. Less amplification. More silence. The unmistakable downgrade from trusted ally to tolerated noise.
That is where Putin now finds himself. Not denounced, not dramatised, just quietly contradicted and set aside. Trust, once squandered, does not regenerate. The damage here is not rhetorical, but structural. Verbal assurances stop carrying weight. Informal understandings harden into demands for proof. Even those who want a deal begin to hedge.
Putin’s problem is no longer that the West doubts him. It is worse than that. He has demonstrated, repeatedly, that even when trust is offered by someone predisposed to believe him, he cannot be relied upon to tell the truth. And in a conflict where credibility is a weapon, Trump’s weakness has become one of Ukraine’s unexpected strengths.
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