Editor’s letter

Remember how chummy Donald Trump was with Vladimir Putin? As a candidate, Trump begged for Putin’s election assistance; as president, he said he trusted the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence; and as ex-president (last year, the very day before Russia invaded Ukraine) he praised Putin as a “genius.” It seems fitting, then, that both men are facing justice in the same week. Putin’s indictment by the International Criminal Court (see Best columns: International, p.15) brands him an accused war criminal. Trump’s looming indictment in New York (see Main stories, p.4) will make him the first U.S. president to be charged with a crime. These men were once the most powerful on the planet, and they are being forced to answer for their actions.

In both cases, the courts are starting with low-hanging fruit. Putin isn’t being served with any of the hard-to-prove charges that arguably fit, such as genocide, for attempting to wipe out the very idea of Ukrainian nationality, or crimes against humanity, for intentionally targeting Ukrainian civilians. Instead, he’s accused of ordering the kidnapping of some 16,000 Ukrainian children— something he’s already admitted to. Trump, for his part, is not yet being charged with attempting a coup against the United States government; or with fomenting the riot on Jan. 6 that led to the deaths of four rioters and five police officers; or with selfdealing as president, when he funneled government money to his hotels and golf courses. The Manhattan DA is bringing the least serious, if most sordid, of the possible charges against the former president: bookkeeping fraud, for hiding his hush-money payment to a porn star. But there’s a big difference between the two men’s cases: While the ICC has no jurisdiction over Putin, the state of New York does have the power to arrest the former U.S. president. Trump’s trial, and the subsequent ones he’s likely to face, will demonstrate that nobody is above the law—at least in the U.S.