Moscow’s latest verbal offensive against European capitals has added a new layer of complexity to already fraught transatlantic politics. In recent days, Russian officials and state-aligned commentators have suggested that leading European governments are actively trying to poison relations between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, portraying the European Union as an obstacle to any prospective rapprochement between Washington and Moscow.
The accusations come at a moment when trust in both Putin and Trump is strikingly low across Europe, while the legacy of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and its ongoing full-scale war in Ukraine continues to shape Western perceptions.
In Moscow’s telling, a potential personal understanding between Putin and Trump is being sabotaged by European elites who fear being sidelined in any future U.S.–Russia deal. Speaking to senior defense and security officials in December, Putin railed against European leaders as hostile “swine” and “little pigs,” accusing them of blocking paths to dialogue while insisting that Russia would achieve its objectives in Ukraine “by diplomacy or force.” (Financial Times summary of the speech).
Russian state media and pro-Kremlin analysts have amplified the claim that European governments, particularly in Berlin, Paris and Brussels, are pressuring Washington not to ease sanctions or strike any Ukraine-related bargain that could be framed domestically as a “win” for Trump and Putin alike. The narrative slots neatly into a long-running Kremlin argument: that a faceless Western “collective” is determined to prevent normalisation between Russia and any U.S. administration willing to talk.
Any discussion of a Putin–Trump relationship is inevitably coloured by the findings of the U.S. special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Mueller report documented that the Russian government interfered “in sweeping and systematic fashion,” through both social media manipulation and hacking campaigns targeting Democratic Party networks, concluding that the operation violated U.S. criminal law and was intended to help Trump’s candidacy. (Mueller report summary) and subsequent analysis of Russian interference.
A separate bipartisan report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee later concluded that Russian intelligence mounted an “unprecedented” campaign against U.S. election infrastructure in all 50 states in 2016, probing voter databases and suppliers of election systems as part of a larger effort to exploit political divisions. (Senate Intelligence Committee report). These findings entrenched deep suspicion of Kremlin motives across much of the Western political class and made any overt Trump–Putin rapprochement domestically toxic in key European capitals.
Public attitudes across Europe go some way toward explaining why EU leaders have little incentive to champion closer ties between the Kremlin and the Trump White House. Surveys consistently show very low confidence in both men’s handling of world affairs.
In a 2025 multi-country survey of European adults, an average of just 2.6 out of 10 respondents expressed confidence in Trump, while Putin scored even lower, with an average of 1.5 out of 10. (Chicago Council on Global Affairs analysis). A separate YouGov poll in early 2025 found majorities in five western European countries viewing Trump as a “threat” to European peace and security, with concerns ranging from 58% in Italy to 78% in the UK. (YouGov/Guardian survey data) Putin was rated as an even greater security risk in the same poll.
More broadly, a global survey by the Pew Research Center in 2025 found that in 19 of 24 countries, more than half of respondents expressed little or no confidence in Trump’s leadership on the world stage, while a median of just 21% trusted Putin. (Pew Research Center report on global confidence) In European countries polled in 2024, trust in Putin fell to single digits in places such as Sweden and Poland.
European policymakers’ skepticism is not only about personalities. It also reflects a shift in strategic thinking accelerated by Trump’s return to the White House. A recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that majorities or pluralities in EU member states now see the United States less as a traditional “ally” and more as a “necessary partner” that might not always be reliable—especially under a Trump presidency. (ECFR survey on European views of the U.S.) Respondents across nine surveyed European countries overwhelmingly favoured the EU “relying on its own forces” for security rather than on Trump’s America.
This growing emphasis on “strategic autonomy” has been reinforced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the subsequent energy and refugee crises. By late 2023, EU member states had collectively pledged tens of billions of euros in military, financial and humanitarian assistance to Kyiv, while also phasing out most imports of Russian coal and seaborne oil. (European Commission overview of EU support for Ukraine) These policies have entrenched a confrontational posture toward Moscow that sits uneasily with the idea of a personal thaw between Putin and any U.S. president.
For the Kremlin, blaming Europe for undermining the Putin–Trump dynamic serves several purposes. Domestically, it portrays Russia as a reasonable actor seeking dialogue, frustrated by a Western bloc supposedly dominated by hawkish Europeans. Internationally, it attempts to drive a wedge within the transatlantic alliance by suggesting that Trump is more open to compromise, but constrained by his European partners.
European policymakers, however, point to a different set of facts: Russia’s track record of disinformation and covert operations in Europe itself. Germany, for example, summoned the Russian ambassador in December 2025 over allegations of cyberattacks and election interference, including a sophisticated disinformation campaign dubbed “Storm 1516” that made use of deepfakes and fabricated news stories to erode trust in democratic institutions. (Associated Press report on German accusations) Such incidents reinforce the view in Berlin and other capitals that the Kremlin remains an active threat to European democracies regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
If European publics are wary of Trump, opinion in Russia has shifted in the opposite direction since his return. A March 2025 survey by the independent Levada Center found that the share of Russians viewing the United States favourably almost doubled—from 16% in September 2024 to 30% in February 2025—while negative views fell from 72% to 51%. (Levada Center data reported by The Moscow Times) The shift suggests that state media’s portrayal of Trump as a potential partner—if only meddlesome Europeans and U.S. “deep state” actors would allow it—has found a receptive audience at home.
Russia’s accusation that Europe is deliberately sabotaging the relationship between Putin and Trump is less a description of documented policy than a politically useful narrative. It allows the Kremlin to depict itself as open to a grand bargain with Washington while casting EU governments as ideologically rigid spoilers. Yet the data on European public opinion and official policy decisions point to a different reality: deep structural mistrust of both the Russian leadership and Trump’s foreign policy instincts, forged by years of military aggression, election meddling and rhetorical attacks on NATO.
Whether a personal rapport between the two leaders could override those forces is doubtful. For now, the interplay between Kremlin messaging, European strategic autonomy and U.S. domestic politics ensures that the Putin–Trump relationship—real or imagined—will remain a potent symbol in a broader struggle over the future of the Euro-Atlantic order.
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