Putin and Trump: The Exercise of Tyrannical Power in Ukraine

Putin and Trump: The Exercise of Tyrannical Power in Ukraine

Alan Sanderson

October 2026

Abstract

This paper examines Vladimir Putin’s exercise of tyrannical power and Donald Trump’s public admiration for his leadership within the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Drawing on republican theories of freedom as non-domination, institutional assessments, human rights investigations and political statements, it defines tyranny through the erosion of effective constraints on arbitrary power. The analysis connects repression within Russia with the denial of Ukrainian sovereignty, showing how historical entitlement, military occupation and coercive institutions restrict collective and individual agency. It argues that the consequences extend beyond territorial control to the material, institutional, cultural and relational conditions through which people shape their lives. Trump’s rhetoric is examined as evidence of publicly expressed political values, while distinguishing interpretation from psychological diagnosis and acknowledging policies that have opposed Russian interests. The paper therefore avoids reducing American policy to personal admiration alone. It contends that praise for unconstrained command risks confusing coercive effectiveness with legitimate authority and marginalising those who bear its costs. Finally, it evaluates diplomacy through Ukrainian participation, enforceable safeguards, civilian protection and accountability. It concludes that responsible leadership and sustainable peace require institutions that constrain domination and preserve the security, political freedom and self-government of people affected by war and occupation.

Introduction

Vladimir Putin’s claim to strong leadership rests on a fundamental substitution: the authority of the ruler takes precedence over the freedom of the people. Within Russia, this involves restricting the institutions through which citizens might challenge political decisions. In Ukraine, it involves claiming the authority to determine another nation’s future by force. Donald Trump’s repeated praise of Putin is troubling because it can present the capacity to impose one’s will as an achievement in itself. The question is what this understanding of strength recognises, and whose suffering it leaves outside the picture.

The argument requires care. Describing Putin’s exercise of power as tyrannical is a political and ethical judgement, supported by evidence of domination. It does not require a psychiatric diagnosis. Similarly, Trump’s statements permit analysis of his public political values without providing certain knowledge of his private motives. His admiration of Putin should be examined alongside policies that have sometimes opposed Russian interests. The strongest criticism does focus on the relationship between rhetoric, institutions and consequences rather than assuming that personal admiration explains everything.

Ukraine brings these questions into sharp focus. However, a discussion confined to relations between powerful leaders risks reproducing the very hierarchy under examination, leaving Ukrainians as the objects of someone else’s negotiation. Their capacity to shape their collective future must instead remain central to any assessment of leadership, diplomacy and peace.

Tyranny as domination

Tyranny involves more than harsh language, unpopular decisions or extensive executive authority. Its defining characteristic is the exercise of power that those subjected to it cannot effectively contest. Philip Pettit’s account of freedom as non-domination provides a useful framework: freedom requires protection against arbitrary interference, including interference that remains a possibility rather than a daily occurrence (Pettit, 1997). A citizen dependent on official goodwill remains vulnerable even when the state temporarily leaves that citizen alone.

Applied to political institutions, this directs attention beyond the existence of elections and courts to their practical independence. Can opposition movements organise? Can journalists investigate powerful officials? Can a court protect someone whom the executive wishes to punish? These questions distinguish a government constrained by public rules from one that uses rules to secure obedience. The presence of legal procedures does not establish that power is accountable.

The European Court of Human Rights supplied concrete evidence in Navalnyy v. Russia. In its Grand Chamber judgement of November 2018, the Court found multiple violations arising from Aleksey Navalnyy’s arrests and detention. It also concluded that reporting bans in two separate legal events pursued the ulterior purpose of suppressing political pluralism (European Court of Human Rights, 2018). This finding is significant because it identifies the political function of what should be ordinary law enforcement.

Constitutional change presents a related problem. The Venice Commission’s assessment of Russia’s 2020 amendments criticised the strengthening of presidential authority and the exemption allowing the incumbent to seek additional terms of office. Its analysis located these changes within already inadequate checks and balances (Venice Commission, 2021). The issue extends beyond how long one leader serves, with constitutional limits being adjusted around the incumbent. Thus, the distinction between an enduring public office and its temporary occupant becomes weaker.

These findings support an institutional account of tyranny. Putin’s government need not abolish every formal constraint to make independent political action hazardous. Domination becomes entrenched when citizens reasonably expect that challenging authority may cost them their liberty, livelihood or organisational survival.

Repression and the reproduction of consent

The Ukrainian war has intensified the relationship between coercion and political loyalty. Mariana Katzarova’s 2025 report, Rule of Fear, examines the use of national security legislation against dissent and anti-war expression. It describes a sustained pattern in which legal categories associated with security become instruments for restricting civic activity (Katzarova, 2025). Whilst the report is the assessment of an independent UN expert, rather than a criminal judgement, its account supports scrutiny of how repression operates through institutions.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights likewise warned in March 2025 that Russian authorities were using restrictive laws, including “foreign-agent” and ‘undesirable-organisation’ designations, against critical voices. Journalists, activists and anti-war protesters faced harassment, detention or exile (Türk, 2025). Such restrictions matter because public agreement cannot be interpreted independently of the costs of disagreement. Silence under these conditions may express fear, exhaustion or strategic self-protection.

The resulting political mechanism is self-reinforcing. War supplies the government with grounds to demand unity; punishment weakens public opposition; diminished opposition then becomes evidence that the nation supports the war. This does not mean that all Russian support is coerced or insincere. It means that official claims of consensus cannot be assessed as though citizens possess equal opportunities to express competing judgements.

Repression also damages the quality of government knowledge. Where criticism threatens careers or freedom, people have incentives to report what superiors wish to hear. An appearance of decisiveness may conceal the loss of reliable correction. This is an institutional inference, rather than proof about the information available during any particular Kremlin meeting. It nevertheless explains why unconstrained leadership can be simultaneously forceful and dangerously insulated from error.

Responsibility should not be displaced onto an allegedly uniform Russian character. The existence of dissent, despite its costs, demonstrates that alternative political commitments remain possible. To identify Russia with Putin’s government would erase those citizens whose resistance exposes the government’s claim to represent everyone.

There is also a distinction between obeying a law and recognising its legitimacy. A person may comply because the penalty for refusal is unbearable. Treating that behaviour as endorsement mistakes an adaptation to power for a freely expressed political judgement. This matters when outsiders admire the apparent order of an authoritarian system: what looks like unity from a distance may depend on denying citizens safe ways to disclose disagreement.

National destiny and the denial of Ukrainian agency

Tyrannical authority often seeks legitimacy by identifying the ruler’s purposes with the nation’s historical destiny. Political disagreement can then appear as disloyalty to a community imagined as older and more important than its living members. In foreign policy, the same reasoning can turn cultural affinity into an asserted entitlement to control neighbouring populations.

Putin’s July 2021 essay on Russian and Ukrainian historical unity offers direct evidence. He presents Russians and Ukrainians as one people and states that Ukraine’s true sovereignty is possible only through partnership with Russia. Yet he also says that Ukraine’s future is for its citizens to decide (Putin, 2021). The tension is revealing: Ukrainian choice is affirmed while an essential condition of its legitimate exercise is prescribed from Moscow.

The ethical objection does not depend on denying shared history. Cultural connections can sustain friendship, migration and cooperation without conferring a right of political ownership. People who share a language may choose different constitutional arrangements and alliances. Historical intimacy cannot substitute for contemporary consent. Otherwise, the stronger state acquires authority to define the weaker population’s authentic identity and reject choices that contradict it.

Russian philosophy should consequently be treated with discrimination. References to religious tradition, civilisational identity or national restoration may help legitimise government policy, but they do not establish a single philosophical cause of the invasion. Nor does the prominence of an ideological commentator prove operational control over the Kremlin. Putin’s own published account provides firmer evidence than speculation about a hidden intellectual master.

The United Nations General Assembly’s March 2022 resolution supplies an alternative political standard. It deplored Russia’s aggression and demanded withdrawal, receiving 141 votes in favour (United Nations General Assembly, 2022). The resolution was not a criminal conviction, but its broad support challenges the suggestion that the dispute concerns only competing Western and Russian preferences. Sovereign equality protects populations from having their political existence made conditional on a neighbour’s historical interpretation.

Occupation as the extension of domestic domination

Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022 extended a conflict that had begun with its seizure of Crimea and fighting in the Donbas in 2014. Occupation reveals the connection between denying meaningful opposition at home and denying independent choice abroad. Military control changes who can speak, which institutions operate and whose version of history becomes compulsory.

OHCHR’s March 2024 reporting described arbitrary detention, torture, killings and restrictions on expression in occupied areas. It documented the replacement of Ukrainian administrative and educational arrangements with Russian systems, alongside pressure to obtain Russian passports (OHCHR, 2024). These practices show why occupation cannot be measured solely by territorial boundaries. Control over schools, documents and essential services changes the practical conditions of membership in a political community.

The report drew on more than 2,300 interviews, while acknowledging the absence of direct access to occupied territory (OHCHR, 2024). That limitation should be stated without dismissing the evidence. Interview-based investigation can establish patterns through corroboration, but readers must distinguish documented findings from assumptions about every locality. The credibility of the argument increases when the method and its constraints remain visible.

In March 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that enforced disappearances committed by Russian authorities amounted to crimes against humanity. It described these acts, together with torture, as part of a widespread and systematic attack against civilians and a coordinated state policy (Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, 2025). These are investigative findings, not convictions of particular defendants. Their importance lies in identifying patterns that exceed isolated misconduct.

Disappearance has effects beyond the detained person. Relatives cannot establish whether someone is alive, secure legal assistance, or begin mourning. Communities learn that removal from ordinary legal protection is possible. The resulting uncertainty makes domination pervasive: people adjust their behaviour around dangers whose boundaries they cannot reliably know. This explains the political significance of the abuses without requiring speculation about individual perpetrators’ psychological gratification.

Children and the human cost of power

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 concerning alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children. The judges found reasonable grounds to believe that he bore responsibility for the alleged crimes (ICC, 2023). The warrant is not a conviction, and respect for that distinction is essential. Serious allegations become less persuasive when their procedural status is exaggerated.

The issue illustrates the wider danger of allowing state purposes to override personal relationships. Children have identities, family connections and interests that cannot properly be reduced to an occupying authority’s account of rescue or assimilation. The ethical question concerns who may decide their future and what safeguards protect them against appropriation by a powerful state. Political claims of benevolence require particular scrutiny when those affected cannot meaningfully refuse.

Civilian casualty evidence provides another necessary correction to the spectacle of strong leadership. UN monitors documented at least 328 civilians killed and 2,105 injured in September 2026. For January to September, they recorded 2,570 killed and 15,211 injured (HRMMU, 2026). These figures distinguish deaths from injuries and represent verified cases rather than the entire human cost. They should not be confused with estimates combining civilian and military casualties.

The same report identifies substantial verification limits in occupied territory and records renewed Russian attacks on electricity and heating infrastructure (HRMMU, 2026). Such damage extends suffering beyond the immediate impact of a strike. A household without dependable heat, power or income experiences insecurity that a casualty total alone cannot express. The moral assessment of political power must therefore include the conditions in which survivors continue living.

These consequences undermine the association between national greatness and the ability to inflict costs. A leader may demonstrate resolve by continuing a destructive policy, but persistence does not establish wisdom or legitimacy. The relevant question is whether the exercise of authority protects human lives and political freedom, including the lives of people outside the ruler’s own claimed community.

The evidence also suggests that ethical agency depends on several interacting conditions. Material security affects whether people can remain in their homes. Institutions determine whether they can seek protection or challenge detention. Cultural practices shape whether their language and identity can be expressed. Relationships sustain care, trust and collective action. Occupation can damage all these conditions together. This is why restoring a border, although politically essential, cannot by itself repair every consequence of domination. Recovery must also rebuild the social conditions through which people can act for themselves.

What Trump publicly admires

Trump’s own language offers the clearest starting point. On 22 February 2022, discussing Putin’s recognition of separatist territories and proposed deployment of troops as peacekeepers, he called the manoeuvre “genius” and described Putin as “very savvy” (Travis and Sexton, 2022). These remarks preceded the full-scale invasion by two days. They should not be presented as an explicit endorsement of every subsequent Russian action.

The interview also contains criticism of Biden, expressions of sadness and Trump’s claim that the crisis would not have occurred under his presidency. Recognising an opponent’s tactical skill is a plausible partial interpretation. Nevertheless, the approving language concerns a coercive operation against Ukraine. The standard of evaluation appears to centre on cleverness and command, with limited attention to the rights of those subjected to the manoeuvre.

A separate example comes from the Helsinki press conference in July 2018. Asked about Russian election interference, Trump referred to American intelligence assessments and Putin’s denial, then characterised the denial as “extremely strong and powerful” (White House, 2018). The episode suggests a troubling tendency to give rhetorical force weight in assessing credibility. A confident denial is a performance; its confidence does not establish its truth.

Several explanations are consistent with this public evidence. Putin’s image of concentrated command may appeal to a politician who places considerable value on visible effectiveness. Praising a formidable counterpart may also reinforce Trump’s account of his own exceptional negotiating ability. Personal diplomacy can make the relationship between leaders appear more consequential than the institutions and populations they represent. These remain interpretations of rhetoric, not established psychological causes.

The attraction may also concern apparent efficiency. A counterpart who faces fewer independent constraints may seem better able to deliver an agreement. Yet the same absence of accountability can weaken confidence that commitments will endure. Personal authority supplies the capacity to change direction as well as to make promises. An assessment of negotiating reliability must therefore examine incentives, enforcement and past conduct rather than the impressive appearance of control.

Public admiration has consequences even where its precise influence on a particular decision cannot be demonstrated. Leaders help establish the standards by which their supporters judge political conduct. Repeatedly praising coercive ingenuity may make the suffering it produces seem secondary to the contest between personalities. The criticism here concerns that evaluative framework. It does not depend on claiming that complimentary language automatically changes a weapons shipment or determines a sanctions decision.

Admiration does not explain every policy

A persuasive criticism must include counterevidence. The first Trump administration supplied Ukraine with defensive assistance, including Javelin anti-tank missiles. A State Department account also recorded sanctions against individuals and entities connected with Russia’s destabilising activities (US Department of State, 2020). The administration’s record therefore cannot be reduced to continuous accommodation of Putin. Institutions, advisers, Congress and strategic pressures also shape policy.

This complicates rather than eliminates the concern. Public praise can coexist with policies that impose costs. The analytical task is to establish when admiration affects judgement, rather than treating every decision as proof of a predetermined relationship. Sanctions, military assistance, public statements and negotiating positions require separate examination before being connected into an explanation.

Trump’s executive order of 16 October 2026 provides a concrete contemporary example. It waived specified duties and sanctions-related provisions under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, invoking the national interest. The order expressly preserved measures imposed under other relevant executive authorities (White House, 2026). It therefore supports criticism of a particular reduction in pressure, rather than a claim that all American sanctions against Russia disappeared.

Reuters associated the decision with concern about energy prices before the midterm elections (Singh and Ward, 2026). Domestic economic pressures offer an explanation that does not require personal affinity to do all the causal work. Governments have legitimate responsibilities towards households facing higher costs. The policy question is whether the benefits of relief outweigh the risks created by reducing pressure on an aggressor, and whether any concessions secure measurable restraint.

The distinction matters ethically as well as analytically. A policy may be explained by electoral incentives and still be open to serious criticism. Conversely, suspicion about a leader’s motives cannot substitute for demonstrating consequences. The strongest assessment asks what the measure changes, who benefits and what protections remain for those exposed to renewed coercion.

Negotiation and a peace that preserves agency

Diplomacy with Putin is necessary wherever it can reduce suffering or establish a sustainable settlement. Talking to an authoritarian ruler does not imply approval of his government. The danger emerges when the achievement of an agreement becomes more important than the rights and security of the people expected to live under it. An arrangement can be expedient for negotiators while leaving its subjects vulnerable.

Acknowledging Ukraine's agency does not imply that its government's decisions are beyond criticism. Rather, it means that the Ukrainian people have the ultimate standing to determine their own future. Their interests cannot be legitimately bartered or represented entirely by Washington or Moscow. While international assistance creates mutual responsibilities, it never confers ownership over the assisted nation's territory, population, or political sovereignty.

Any ceasefire should therefore be evaluated through practical questions. Are obligations specific and reciprocal? Can violations be independently monitored? What consequences follow non-compliance? What happens to civilians under occupation, detainees and displaced families? These are criteria for judgement rather than claims that one detailed settlement is already available. They connect the language of peace to the institutions needed to make it dependable.

A further problem is the unequal distribution of negotiating pressure. A partner dependent on assistance may be easier to influence than an adversary willing to absorb punishment. This can tempt a mediator to obtain visible progress by demanding concessions from the more accessible party. Ease of obtaining agreement offers no moral reason to transfer the burdens of compromise onto the invaded population.

The concern about escalation is nevertheless real. Leaders must weigh the dangers of continued warfare alongside the dangers of rewarding conquest. Neither the promise of an effortless military solution nor the demand for an immediate settlement resolves that dilemma. Responsible judgement requires attention to probable consequences, enforceable safeguards and the voices of those bearing the greatest risks.

Accountability must also govern Ukraine’s own response. OHCHR’s occupation reporting raised concerns about overly broad collaboration prosecutions, including cases involving people who maintained essential services or acted under coercion (OHCHR, 2024). This does not make invasion and defence equivalent. It demonstrates that the principle being defended has general application: people should be judged with attention to their actual choices and constraints. A society resisting domination strengthens its position by protecting those whose apparent cooperation occurred under threat.

The wider international implication follows from the same reasoning. If territorial coercion secures lasting political rewards without credible restraints, other governments may draw conclusions about the usefulness of force. This is a risk to assess rather than an inevitable prediction. Nevertheless, a settlement’s consequences extend beyond the personalities of its signatories. The treatment of Ukrainian sovereignty helps shape expectations about whether smaller states can rely on public rules when confronted by stronger neighbours.

Strength and accountability

Putin’s exercise of power illustrates how repression, historical entitlement and military coercion can reinforce one another. Independent political activity becomes dangerous within Russia, while Ukrainian independence is treated as acceptable only on terms defined by Moscow. The resulting image of command can look impressive when power is evaluated through decisiveness alone. Its human consequences expose the inadequacy of that standard.

Trump’s praise provides grounds for concern about his attraction to this style of leadership. It does not establish that he endorses every Russian abuse, shares a complete imperial ideology or acts under Putin’s direction. The defensible conclusion is narrower and more consequential: admiration for unconstrained command risks confusing a ruler’s ability to dominate with his authority to decide.

Ukraine supplies the essential test. Leadership deserves respect when it protects people, permits correction and accepts limits on its purposes. Peace deserves that name when it improves the conditions of security and self-government for those living through war. An agreement that merely ratifies the stronger leader’s will risks preserving the central premise of tyranny: that other people’s futures are his to determine.

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