Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Opinion
Leonid Bershidsky

Putin's Ultimatum to the Next U.S. President

The Russian president plans to act as an equal, whether or not the U.S. wants to treat him as one.
Negotiate this.

Negotiate this.

Photographer: Alexei Nikolskyi/AFP/Getty Images

The next U.S. administration will inherit the worst relationship with Russia since Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire. Judging from the list of grievances that President Vladimir Putin has laid out, even a relatively Putin-friendly Donald Trump will have a hard time satisfying him.

Putin delivered his message to the future U.S. president Monday, just as the U.S. State Department announced it was suspending negotiations with Russia on a ceasefire in Syria and Russia-backed Syrian troops moved to take more ground in Aleppo. In a bill submitted to parliament, Putin threatened to end a joint U.S.-Russian disarmament program -- in which surplus weapons-grade plutonium is processed into fuel -- unless the U.S. meets certain conditions: