Russia’s New World Order: How Donald Trump's Chaos Helps Putin

Russia allegedly hacked the U.S. presidential election last year to boost Donald Trump’s chances of winning over Democrat Hillary Clinton and ensure better relations between the two superpowers and Cold War adversaries because Trump hasn’t been nearly as hawkish toward the Kremlin as other politicians before him. But Russia now reportedly believes relations with the U.S. have actually worsened and it’s aimed to take advantage of what it considers instability at the highest level of the executive branch, experts told The New York Times for a story published Monday.

“They think he is unstable, that he can be manipulated, that he is authoritarian and a person without a team,” editor in chief of liberal radio station Echo of Moscow Alexei A. Venediktov said.

The report honed in on the fact that many of Trump’s previous statements had fallen well in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to disrupt the U.S. and the West’s standing militarily, diplomatically and in other ways. Trump had repeatedly questioned membership in NATO and how much the U.S. has spent on defense compared to other members, which was echoed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis when he first appeared and spoke at NATO headquarters in Brussels earlier this month.

Trump has often said improved relations with Russia, especially in efforts to combat global terrorism, “wouldn’t be a bad thing” and he’s also praised Putin on his official Twitter account.

Some experts now held the belief that Trump’s increasingly nationalist, or isolationist, rhetoric and his executive orders that have called to “Make America Great Again” have also freed up Russia to continue its questionable exploits of global military expansion.

“Right now the Kremlin is looking for ways that Russia can use the chaos in Washington to pursue its own interests,” a member of a Kremlin advisory group Sergei A. Markov told The Times. “The main hope is that the U.S. will be preoccupied with itself and will stop pressuring Russia.”

In the last six months alone, Russia’s military has repeatedly poked it’s U.S. and NATO counterparts in a series of flybys and naval maneuvers. Earlier this month a Russian spy ship, which was also equipped with missiles, was spotted off the coasts of Delaware, Connecticut and New York’s Long Island. Meanwhile, Russia flew jets and a bomber near Baltic Sea-based states and NATO members, a repeat of other incidents from last year.