Putin is on the wrong side of history. And lately, so is the U.S.

Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, now also the de facto broker of the Russia-Ukraine peace process, recently gave an interview in which he recited many of the Russian government’s talking points — plus, a gushing account of Vladimir Putin’s sterling qualities. Instead of doing a point-by-point rebuttal, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief recap of the history of U.S.-Russia relations.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States, far from humiliating Moscow and isolating it, did the opposite. It tried to integrate the newly democratic state into the highest counsels of global power. It eventually expanded the Group of Seven into the Group of Eight to let Russia in, even though Russia was by no stretch an advanced industrial country. International lending assistance to Moscow between 1989 and 1998 totaled about $66 billion by one U.S. government estimate. (For comparison, total U.S. aid to Israel in those days was about $3 billion per year).

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