Diane Francis
August 4, 2025
Putin and Russia are a greater threat to the world than was Hitler and Nazi Germany, but a sea change to recognize this reality in the White House has yet to occur. Instead, President Donald Trump imposes a deadline here, and moves nuclear submarines around there, but Putin “plays” him for time. The Russian dictator doubles down, bypasses sanctions, commits genocide, starts wars, cyberattacks, sabotages, stokes unrest globally, and commits war crimes. Russia is worse than Hitler’s Germany because it has a nuclear arsenal, is resource-rich, and has always been a totalitarian state with a brainwashed and cowed populace. Putin answers to no one, and criticism in his country is a death sentence. Thus, he pursues a mission to recreate the Soviet empire and roll out a global hybrid war that is behind wars in Israel and Sudan, along with insurrections and terrorist acts. Essentially, he’s launched World War III, and yet Donald Trump recently remarked: “Russia could be so rich right now. Instead, they spend all their money on war. They spend everything on war and killing people. That doesn’t make sense to me. I thought he would want to end this thing quickly.”
How bloody naive. Is Trump merely out of his depth or on the payroll?
He treats negotiations as though he is dealing with a real estate tycoon who wants to snag an apartment building for a low price. But the reality is that Putin intends to steal all the world’s real estate by gunpoint, and as the US President dithers over deadlines, the Russian escalates and prepares for war against NATO itself. His spending is up, conscription increases, along with sign-up bonuses, and more aerial attacks and battlefield assaults are undertaken daily. Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, estimates that Moscow plans to spend $1.1 trillion on rearmament by 2036, an unprecedented investment since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “There is a total mobilization of politics, economy, and society of the Russian Federation to be ready for the upcoming large-scale war,” Budanov said in July.
It is only a recent war of words between the US and Russia that convinced Trump to take his first military step against Putin since he took office. This began on July 14 when Trump publicly demanded that Russia stop its aggression against Ukraine within 50 days. Horrific air attacks by Putin against Ukrainian civilians followed, so on July 29, he reduced the deadline to 10 or 12 days. A spokesman said that if fighting weren’t halted by August 8, Trump would impose sanctions on Russia and possibly 100% tariffs on all its trading partners.
Russian Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov shot back that Russia wouldn’t stop fighting and added, furthermore, that the Russian economy had “developed immunity” against Western sanctions. He said that Russian technocrats have built an economy that can weather Western sanctions, and that one top Moscow university even offers a new master’s degree in sanctions evasion.
Then, on July 31, things heated up again when Putin’s sidekick, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, waded in, posting: “Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with (Trump’s) own country.” It was another one of his vague references to a nuclear exchange, and Trump told Medvedev to “watch his words” and ordered the deployment of two US nuclear submarines closer to Russia. “Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev,” Mr. Trump wrote, “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences.”
A Wall Street Journal editorial endorsed the move but commented: “Let’s hope he’s keeping lines open to Moscow so there is no escalation based on misjudgments about intentions. But even rhetorical exchanges over weapons that could create mass destruction are worth avoiding. Mr. Trump earlier this summer rebuked Mr. Medvedev for casually throwing around the ‘N word’ (Nuclear!), and he was correct then. He’s also right to be losing patience with Mr. Putin’s murderous Ukraine campaign, and he can show that seriousness by imposing secondary sanctions and arming Kyiv.”
Worse, it remains unclear precisely what, if any, penalties Trump will impose on Russia and its trading partners if the Kremlin fails to meet his August 8 deadline. Trump said an additional 25% tariff would be applied to India, along with China, for buying Russian oil. But both nations indicated they will purchase Russian crude anyway. Trump has the discretion to slap higher tariffs, and Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal have proposed a “neutron bomb” of up to 500% oil tariffs. But this was not even mentioned, and Blumenthal was quoted as saying that the legislation won’t be passed for weeks because Congress is about to leave for its summer recess.
It’s little wonder that Russia ignores the noise out of the White House and Congress. In response, Putin’s “troll”, Medvedev, sniped at Senator Graham and his proposed tariffs: “It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America First, gramps!”
Trump’s mismanagement of Putin is in the spotlight, but he’s also oblivious to Russia’s other predations and wars. In partnership with Iran, Moscow’s Wagner mercenaries trained and supported the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 (Putin’s birthday) and fielded other terrorist organizations in the region. Russian mercenaries also operate across Africa to bring about regime changes, enable insurrections, and have been behind the world’s most devastating war in Sudan. They facilitated the conflict by providing weapons to the government and all its enemies. Since 2023, more than 8.8 million have been internally displaced, 3.5 million have fled, and famine is widespread, killing hundreds of thousands of children. During this time, the country’s gold and resources have been stolen and airlifted daily to Moscow to help pay for its war in Ukraine.
Despite ample evidence, there is no consensus in Washington or Brussels that this is a global war that must be stopped. Instead, leaders haggle over tariffs, next moves, and whether to fund
Ukraine as opposed to Israel, as though the same regime wasn’t behind all conflicts. Only a global alliance will stop Putin and Russia. The country must be economically isolated, designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by Washington, and removed from its permanent seat in the United Nations’ Security Council. The seized Russian central bank assets must be used to buy weapons for Ukraine, its economy choked, and its disinformation system dismantled. If Putin’s reign ends, the Russian Federation will splinter, and the world will be safer.
Diane Francis is an expert on Canada, the United States, Canada-US relations, Silicon Valley, future technology, geopolitics, the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Putin, energy, business, and white-collar crime. Always provocative, her direct and forceful writing has established her international reputation in covering the personalities, trends, and financial backstories that affect companies, individuals, governments and societies. Her popular twitter feed on tech and corruption has more than 240,000 followers around the world. An award-winning columnist, bestselling author, investigative journalist, speaker, and television commentator, she is Editor-at-Large at Canada’s National Post and a columnist for American Interest, Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert, and Kyiv Post. . In 1991, Francis became Editor of Canada’s Financial Post, the first woman editor of a national daily newspaper in Canada, a position she held until the paper was sold in 1998. She is the author of ten books, including Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country (2013, featured in a cover story in Foreign Policy), Who Owns Canada Now?: Old Money, New Money and the Future of Canadian Business (2008), and Immigration: The Economic Case (2002).