The latest call between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin has proved to be a barrel of laughs for Russian state media propagandists, military experts, and State Duma officials, who are convinced that the U.S. president is following the Kremlin’s plan to help vanquish Ukraine.
During the latest broadcast of a state TV show, Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, host Vladimir Solovyov pointed out, “It should be noted that this week, we were able to exhale… Of course, Zelensky is the main loser of this week.”
Solovyov entertained the panelists and the audience with distasteful videos posted by the American president, and laughed at the Democrats and Ukraine.
During Monday’s broadcast of Russia’s 60 Minutes, host Evgeny Popov said that Trump merely teased Zelensky with Tomahawks, “like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey.” U.S. correspondent Valentin Bogdanov noted, “Trump flipped over the chess board… There is a popular theory that the story with Tomahawks was used by Trump solely to lure Zelensky over, and lure him here alone… Zelensky will be brought to Budapest solely to sign his capitulation.”
On the program One’s Own Truth, pundits concluded that the pendulum had finally swung back their way, and it can be said once again that Trump is theirs. Journalist Michael Bohm stated that Putin knows Trump all too well, which enables him to manipulate the U.S. president and to skillfully “lead Trump by his nose.”
Oleg Barabanov, professor of international relations at Moscow State Institute, asserted that no one believes that peace will follow the Budapest meeting between Trump and Putin. Publicist Abbas Juma mocked Trump’s peacekeeping claims. He surmised that Trump is just a showman who doesn’t care about the outcome as much as successful publicity, and the Budapest meeting will provide ample publicity but not much else.
While Trump’s sudden flip-flopping caught many off guard, his turn against Zelensky was entirely predictable if you consider the initial reactions from Putin and his top-level propagandists when it seemed that Trump was threatening a major escalation against Russia.
Putin was surprisingly relaxed about Trump’s apparent flirtation with providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine—almost as if it was a meaningless threat that had been cooked up in private between Trump and Putin.
Putin’s reaction was in stark contrast to the overt threats he has made against anyone who dared to intervene in his invasion since February 2022.
During a press conference in Tajikistan on October 10, 2025, the Russian president coyly replied that he would respond to Tomahawk deliveries in a subdued way. “Our response is the strengthening of the Russian Federation’s air defense systems,” he said. Putin also intriguingly pointed out, “We did not fully disclose what was discussed in Anchorage.”
Many of the Kremlin’s top mouthpieces echoed the same mysterious talking point. Appearing on The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov on Oct. 9, military expert Mikhail Khodaryonok nonchalantly said that the talk of providing the Tomahawk missiles is merely “an issue of big politics” and alluded to a secret agreement reached by Putin and Trump in Alaska. He speculated that no one might find out what was truly said there for a very long time: “Decades may go by, before we find out about results that were achieved during certain negotiations.”
Since peace is the last thing on the minds of Russian military experts and other propagandists, Khodaryonok advocated destroying Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure in its entirety as soon as possible.
Appearing on a state TV show 60 Minutes on Oct. 13, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee Alexey Zhuravlyov implied that Trump’s threats of supplying Tomahawks were just a ploy, jointly coordinated by Trump and Putin. He predicted that Trump would call Putin to ask his opinion about supplying these missiles to Ukraine and then use the Russian president’s rejection of this idea as the pretext for changing his mind.
On Oct. 19, during the broadcast of state TV show Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, Solovyov pointed out, “Note that no one correctly guessed that things would turn out the way they did. Why do you think that is? Because neither Trump nor Putin publicly say what they’ve agreed upon.”
The assertion that a secret deal was made by the two heads of state in Anchorage has been a theme in the Russian media ever since the meeting took place. On Sept. 24, during the broadcast of the TV program The Meeting Place, Gevorg Mirzayan, research fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences U.S. and Canadian Studies Institute, complained that Trump has failed to complete Putin’s homework assignment, allegedly given in Anchorage: convincing Ukraine to capitulate and persuading Europe to accept this outcome.
Mirzayan noted, “At the conclusion of the summit, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump agreed on a certain formula for a resolution. What was required of Trump was to make Europe and Ukraine accept it. Trump failed to complete his homework.” He scoffed at the U.S. president’s threats and insults towards Russia as a mere smokescreen, which is why they were downplayed and disregarded by the Kremlin.
On its face, Sunday’s report by the Financial Times confirms this hypothesis, suggesting that Trump spent his meeting with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky forcefully and crudely demanding that Ukraine accept Putin’s terms or face total destruction—presumably without any help from the United States.
It seems that Trump lured Zelensky to Washington by dangling the promise of Tomahawks so that he could bully the Ukrainian president into accepting Ukraine’s capitulation—and completing the mission assigned by Vladimir Putin.
The post Putin’s Pals Laugh at Trump for Following Secret Kremlin Orders appeared first on The Daily Beast.
