The chaos of American politics under Trump is amusing to the Putin-era élite. Photograph by Mikhail Svetlov / Getty

“They are laughing their asses off in Moscow.” And thus President Trump may have uttered his most accurate analysis yet of Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 Presidential election. With Robert Mueller’s investigation advancing—the special counsel indicted thirteen Russians, on Friday—and H. R. McMaster, Trump’s own national-security adviser, telling a crowd of international dignitaries that the evidence against Russia was “incontrovertible,” Trump was apparently forced to find a new line of argumentation.

It wasn’t so long ago—last November—that, after having talked with Putin privately during a summit in Vietnam, Trump declared that he was ready to believe the Russian President’s denials. “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that, when he tells me that, he means it,” he said. But a growing and increasingly undeniable body of evidence suggests that he did, and it has forced Trump to change tack: no matter what happened, Trump seems to be arguing, let’s not talk about it because it makes America look silly in the eyes of the people who pulled this caper off in the first place.

As Mueller’s indictment alleges, the Kremlin was guided by the “strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system”—that is, to support Trump as a way of screwing with everybody, and everything, else. The Kremlin was attracted to Trump in large measure as a clown and a wrecking ball, a political phenomenon that would upend America’s domestic status quo, and thus tarnish the country’s profile on the world stage. Putin had famously called him “yarkiy,” which, as I wrote after Trump’s victory, in November, 2016, is “a tricky word that means colorful, gaudy, or bright, in the way that the neon lights shine from the marquee of one of Trump’s casinos.”

That Trump also took policy positions amenable to the Kremlin, such as ending sanctions against Russia and joining forces with it in Syria, made his candidacy seem a win-win: either Trump would shift U.S. policy in a way that would benefit Russia or he would fail at that and set off an all-consuming political crisis in America, which, in a roundabout way, would also benefit Russia. Today, it seems like the latter scenario is prevailing.

Last year, for a piece in the magazine on Russia’s election operation, Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the independent radio station Echo of Moscow, told me—along with my co-authors, David Remnick and Evan Osnos—that “Trump was attractive to people in Russia’s political establishment as a disturber of the peace for their counterparts in the American political establishment.” Venediktov spoke of Trump as a source of “turbulence,” which is useful because a “country that is beset by turbulence closes up on itself—and Russia’s hands are freed.”

The uproar in Washington these days not only has a kind of political utility for Moscow but also contains a note of comeuppance. It’s amusing, in a devilish and satisfying way, because of the many injuries and slights the Putin-era political élite feels it has suffered at the hands of the United States over the years—as the Russians see it, hypocritical lectures about the importance of governance and institutions and the democratic process. The promotion of these values has long been greeted with hostile skepticism in Moscow.

And now it’s all blowing up in America’s face. The U.S. President is, depending on the hour, in open conflict with Congress, the media, the intelligence services, and now, seemingly, his own national-security adviser. That sort of turbulence may leave the United States paralyzed and indecisive, unable to speak with a common, or even coherent, voice on a number of important policy issues. That is most true in Syria, where Moscow has supplanted Washington as the dominant outside power. Russia’s hands are freed.

On Sunday night in Moscow, state news outlets like Vesti and RT ran short items on Trump’s tweet, translating Trump’s call to “Get smart, America!” It must indeed be amusing for the political technologists—as the stage managers of Russia’s domestic scene are called—to watch a U.S. President at war with so many parts of the political system, while, at the same time, the Kremlin is preparing for a serene, almost unnoticeable coronation of Putin for his fourth Presidential term, next month. He won’t have to face any uncomfortable questions from the media or pushback from members of parliament, and there certainly will be no independent prosecutor. What a laugh it must be to see how much turbulence those institutions can churn up for your adversary. The question—the answer to which we’ll find out sooner rather than later—is whether the joke is ultimately on us or them.