Trump must not be taken in by Putin’s genial side

The World Cup is showing the Russian president in a good light, but do not forget his links to Novichok

As the 2018 World Cup reaches its climax, no one will draw more satisfaction from the way the tournament has progressed than Vladimir Putin.

The event will, of course, attain legendary status for millions of fans in Britain if the England team pulls off the remarkable feat of bringing home the trophy it last held in 1966, an achievement that will move significantly closer if they manage to beat Croatia in tonight’s semi-final.

An English triumph at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on Sunday night might not be Mr Putin’s preferred outcome, but the Russian autocrat will derive far more pleasure from the fact that the Russians have won plaudits around the world for hosting a well-organised tournament, one that has been conducted in an atmosphere of warmth and friendliness. It’s a marked contrast to the dire warnings about Russian gangs indulging in acts of violence and intimidation against English fans that preceded the event – but then, the Russians have been under intense security ever since Fifa, the sport’s governing body, made its remarkable decision in 2010 to award Russia the games instead of England, despite the best efforts of David Beckham and the Duke of Cambridge.

Now, with Russia’s battered reputation enjoying a revival from its hosting of the games, Mr Putin will see it as the perfect preparation for his first major bilateral summit with the US President, Donald Trump, which is due to take place in the neutral ground of Helsinki immediately after the World Cup’s closing festivities.

There is nothing Mr Putin likes more than to mark the end of a major sporting event hosted in Russia by following it up with a demonstration of his own political supremacy. In 2014 he celebrated the conclusion of the Sochi Winter Olympics by launching the invasion of Crimea, which was then an internationally recognised province of Ukraine, but is now an illegally annexed adjunct of Mr Putin’s Russia. With Mr Trump declaring, on the eve of his first official visit to Britain, that his summit with Mr Putin “may be easier” than meeting Theresa May in the midst of the Government’s self-inflicted Brexit crisis, the Russian leader will no doubt be hoping he can turn the Helsinki meeting into another personal triumph.

Certainly, from Mr Putin’s perspective, the omens could not look more favourable.

Mr Trump travels to Finland with relations between the White House and Nato at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, a rift that has led Mr Trump to question openly the value of persisting with the alliance.

This in turn has prompted speculation on both sides of the Atlantic that, by pressing for a summit with Mr Putin, the American president is planning to cut a deal with his Russian opposite number – one that would allow Washington to divest itself of its costly military investment in Europe, thereby leaving the chronically underfunded Europeans to fend for themselves against the very tangible threat that Mr Putin’s Russia poses to European security.

The notion that Mr Trump could single-handedly resolve long-standing tensions between Washington and Moscow might appear fanciful. But the President has already demonstrated his unconventional approach through his recent dealings with North Korea, where his surprise decision to cancel long-planned military exercises caught even his most trusted security advisers off guard.

There are now fears that Mr Trump might be minded to make a similar gesture towards the Kremlin, for example by cancelling military exercises planned for the Baltics later this year as an act of goodwill.

Mr Putin will certainly go into the talks hoping he can extract a major concession from the US leader, one that will help to boost his political standing.

The only negative for Mr Putin in this otherwise rosy scenario has been the untimely reminder of Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury poisoning, where the Russian-made nerve agent Novichok has now claimed its first fatality.

The Russians have insisted repeatedly that they had nothing to do with the attempted poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March. The evidence acquired by British intelligence in the aftermath of the attack, though, was sufficient to persuade our allies – including the US – of Russian complicity, thereby prompting the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats around the world.

The fact that a British woman has now died as a result of this Russiansponsored attack – her boyfriend remains in a critical condition – certainly takes some of the gloss off Mr Putin’s attempts to use the World Cup as a platform to rehabilitate Russia’s image.

And it should persuade Mr Trump to review his attitude towards Mr Putin, a man who, far from being a genial World Cup host, is the mastermind of the first chemical weapons attack on European soil since the end of the Second World War, and as such, not to be trusted.