Trump’s Russia shift puts US intelligence community in a bind

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump (Courtesy: Reuters file photo)

When America’s intelligence leaders appear before the US Congress this week to deliver the first public Worldwide Threat Assessment of Donald Trump’s second term, they will be forced to navigate a stark choice: stay true to years of analysis identifying Vladimir Putin as a hostile threat, or recalibrate their tone to match the Trump administration’s increasingly sympathetic view of the Russian president, The New York Times reported.

That choice has become more fraught with the emergence of Steve Witkoff — a longtime Trump associate and now his envoy to Russia and the Middle East — as a vocal advocate for a dramatically softer stance on Moscow. In a recent interview with pro-Trump commentator Tucker Carlson, Witkoff described Putin as “straight up,” questioned the premise that Russia wants to conquer Ukraine, and mocked NATO allies’ fears as outdated Cold War thinking.

Witkoff’s comments mark a jarring reversal of the longstanding US and allied position on Russia. Since 2022, the intelligence community has consistently warned that Putin’s ambitions extend beyond Ukraine, seeking to destabilize Western democracies and undermine global norms. But Witkoff now argues that all Russia wants is “stability,” and even floated the idea of future US–Russia partnerships on trade and artificial intelligence.

This dramatic shift has left many allies and intelligence professionals disoriented. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the administration’s rhetoric “deeply disorienting” for US intelligence officers trained to treat Putin as a dangerous adversary. “If you grew up in the intelligence community knowing all the awful things Vladimir Putin had done, and all of a sudden you have a change in posture where you completely take Russia’s side, how do you make sense of that?” Warner said.

The concern is not just domestic. European allies, already sceptical of Trump’s foreign policy, have privately expressed alarm at how closely Witkoff’s statements resemble Russian propaganda. He has endorsed widely discredited referendums held under duress in occupied Ukrainian regions, describing them as legitimate expressions of democratic will.

Ukrainian lawmakers are outraged. Oleksandr Merezhko, head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, called for Witkoff’s removal, accusing him of relaying Kremlin narratives. “Who is he? Is he Trump’s envoy, or maybe he’s Putin’s envoy?” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky was more restrained but pointedly remarked that Russian disinformation had likely penetrated the Trump White House. He cited Trump’s repetition of false Russian claims about Ukrainian troop positions and described a “web of disinformation” contributing to their rocky relationship.

The moment of truth for the intelligence community now lies with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Both are viewed as Trump loyalists,

but they must decide whether to uphold the intelligence community’s traditional assessments of Russia or adjust to the president’s evolving worldview.

Though Tuesday’s official threat assessment is expected to reflect prior evaluations, all eyes will be on the testimony — and whether America’s top spies bend their analysis to suit a narrative that paints Putin not as a threat, but a potential partner.