And yet, even as Trump seems determined to play the role of Putin fanboy and patsy, what is striking is how little the Russians have actively gotten from his administration. They want some new grand bargain, a Yalta 2.0, that would fracture Europe into spheres of influence and at once elevate Russia to the status of a peer power, while confirming that Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, and most of the other post-Soviet states fall within its “sphere of privileged interest.” None of that is on the table.

What Putin wants is the lifting of sanctions, whether those enforced under the Magnitsky Act that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was lobbying Donald the Younger on at their now-infamous meeting in June, or the personal and economic sanctions applied after Moscow annexed Crimea and invaded south eastern Ukraine. Although some voices are calling for a new policy (often code for “lift the sanctions”), Congress is actually doubling down on them. In the political equivalent of putting a child-lock on the medicine cabinet, they are also limiting Trump’s capacity to interfere with the sanctions.

Moscow would love to see NATO disbanded or simply rendered redundant. Yet precisely because of Washington’s oscillation between disinterest and demands, the alliance’s European members are at long last getting their acts together and increasing their defense spending. Even the European Union is talking more seriously than ever about the need for security cooperation.

None of this is that surprising. While there are areas where Russia and America can and should cooperate—dealing with North Korea or fighting the Islamic State, for example—Putin’s goals and values are squarely opposed to those of the West. Russia’s interests are largely not America’s. Furthermore, Trump’s bizarre determination to love-bomb Putin at almost every opportunity, his cavalier approach to the facts, his tone-deaf responses to genuine concerns about his and his team’s contacts with Russians, all inevitably raise hackles and worries across the political spectrum.

Nonetheless, it is likely that the Russians were at first out not to elect Trump through their hacks and leaks, but to weaken what they considered an inevitable Hillary Clinton presidency. After all, Putin seems to believe that American politics is controlled by an institutional “deep state”; as one Russian Foreign Ministry official airily asserted before the election, “the American establishment will not let Trump win.”

Moscow may often get democracies wrong, but America misunderstands its intelligence tradecraft at its peril. Even the most mediocre agent handler would know that, were Trump really some suborned asset, it would be crucial to keep this fact secret. He would be told to avoid any appearance of partiality towards Putin and to maintain a hard line, such that if and when he did offer the Russians any concessions, no one could question his motives.