A barrage of damning revelations about contacts between Donald Trump’s associates and Russian officials threatens to derail his plans for a closer relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Growing political pressure on Trump to stand up to Putin rather than work with him could even escalate tensions between the United States and Russia to dangerous levels.


U.S. officials, Russia experts and Kremlin officials are all lowering their expectations for a thaw in relations after the ouster of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for misrepresenting his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and reports that Trump aides were in touch with Russian intelligence officials during the presidential campaign.

Trump has long praised Putin in terms that members of both parties find confounding and even suspicious. And since taking office, his aides have explored the possibility of lifting some sanctions imposed on Moscow by President Barack Obama.

“It feels to a lot of us like something’s off” about the Trump team’s thinking on Moscow, said one career government official whose duties include Russia.

But, the official added: “After the past 48 hours, I think it’s unlikely they’re going to push this hard anytime soon.”

The president also has found that congressional Republicans are not as warm to the idea of a closer relationship with Putin.

“Russia is not our friend,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. Corker also called possible Russian influence over the Trump administration “the elephant in the Room.”

"The big issue right now is dealing with this Russia issue, making sure that it doesn't destabilize our ability to move ahead as a country," Corker added.

As a candidate, Trump said almost exclusively positive or supportive things about Russia. But since his inauguration last month, Trump aides and Cabinet members have talked about Moscow in tough terms.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer asserted that Trump has been “incredibly tough on Russia,” citing as evidence remarks by U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley condemning Russia’s annexation of a part Ukraine.

In his confirmation hearings, Defense Secretary James Mattis called Russia a threat to the NATO alliance and pointed to “an increasing number of areas in which we will have to confront Russia.”

But experts say the Trump team has sent mixed signals, including with official news statements that have described the conflict in eastern Ukraine — where Russia supports a pro-Moscow separatist insurgency — with language that downplays Russia’s culpability.

Trump himself has remained unwilling to speak critically in personal terms about Putin, even dismissing charges that Putin has approved or condoned the killing of his political rivals. “You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump asked Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly earlier this month when asked about the suspiciously high rate at which Kremlin critics — one of whom fell into a coma earlier this month, two years after an alleged attempt to poison him — meet untimely ends.

“They been all over the map,” said the Trump administration official whose duties involve Russia: “But now they’re on the defensive.”

Trump’s comments as a candidate and since his swearing-in have suggested that he is willing to partner with Russia in Syria to fight the Islamic State and that he might consider lifting some U.S. sanctions on Moscow. Some news reports have suggested that Flynn might have indicated to Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak, that Trump would lift sanctions imposed by Obama in December to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Trump will find it difficult to do anything that looks like he is reaching out to Russia without sparking a firestorm about what his real intentions are, whether he’s trying to sell out American interest,” said Thomas Graham, a former top Russia official in George W. Bush’s White House.

“The relationship was dangerous before because of the lack of communication. But even more so now if Trump concludes that he needs to overcompensate,” Graham said.

Graham and others said the problem is compounded by numerous vacancies in top foreign policy jobs, limiting communication with Russia and likely delaying preparations for a first meeting between Trump and Putin.

In the interim, the two governments will meet at lower levels, including a discussion planned for Thursday between Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs, and his Russian counterpart in Baku, Azerbaijan. On the agenda, according to a Defense Department statement: “the importance of consistent and clear military-to-military communication to prevent miscalculation and potential crises.”

Experts called that a welcome development, given that four Russian planes buzzed a U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea last week in what the Navy called “an unsafe and unprofessional manner.” That was only the latest of several incidents of its kind in eastern Europe in recent months.

“Eventually that’s going to lead to a tragedy,” said the U.S. official.

One Washington Republican who recently returned from Moscow, where he met with some Kremlin officials, said Russian “expectations at this point are calibrated. I don't think they have the kinds of soaring expectations that I think some people here attribute to them.”

Russian officials are skeptical about Trump’s confrontational posture toward Iran, an ally of Moscow, he said, as well as Trump’s talk of roiling the Middle East by moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Trump has more recently backed away from that idea.)

Russian media outlets, which gave Trump favorable coverage in the run-up to the election, have more recently highlighted his setbacks. A recent headline in the English-language Kremlin-funded outlet RT, which U.S. intelligence officials have cited as a vehicle for Russian attempts to influence the U.S. political system, ran a late January story headlined “Majority disapprove of Trump after 8 days in office.”

Although prospects for a Trump-Putin partnership are dimming, they were always exaggerated to begin with, said Andrew Weiss, a former National Security Council aide for Russia during the Clinton administration who is now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The Russian goal with regard to the new administration has never been about sealing a grand bargain on issues like Ukraine and Syria. Their priorities lie elsewhere,” Weiss said. Putin is mainly interested in undermining U.S. influence abroad to Russia’s gain and so that America poses no threat to his own survival.

A new Carnegie report co-authored by Weiss argues that U.S.-Russia relations “cannot be repaired quickly or easily” and must rely on guiding principals of support for NATO, Ukraine and other American commitments.

“Unless the U.S. is willing to sell out cardinal principals of U.S. foreign policy, the notion of a quick rapprochement with the Russians looks unachievable,” Weiss said.

But he added that it looks much harder for Trump to cut a deal than it did even a few weeks ago.

“Right now, the Trump administration is going to be in a much more defensive crouch about Russia, because they don't want to fuel the story line that they’re doing favors for Russia or paying them back for intervening in the campaign,” Weiss said.