“The Big 3”

If you had walked into a Russian gift shop “Skazka” on the touristic Arbat Street in downtown Moscow on February 13, 2025, you would have been surprised to see 3 giant matryoshkas (traditional Russian wooden nesting dolls) standing together depicting Russian President Putin, America’s President Trump and China’s Leader Xi Jinping.

After Putin and Trump reportedly spoke by phone on February 13, 2025, Russians are hailing it as a "first step" towards repairing ties between the two nuclear-armed superpowers.

Since then, Trump has accused Zelensky of being a “dictator” for not holding elections in April 2024 due to Martial Law in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. He said the Ukrainian leader only wants keep riding his  “gravy train with American dollars”, and blamed him for starting the war with Russia (which Trump later retracted). At the same time Trump praised Putin and said that Putin was someone he can work with closely. This is in stark difference to Biden calling Zelensky a “courageous and determined defender of democracy” and denouncing Putin as a “war criminal.”

Marxist political economist David McNally described the actions of the Trump administration in a post on social media on 19 February 2025: “It is about a concerted pivot to targeting China—its real global rival—and weakening China’s ties to Russia. Hence, throwing Ukraine under the bus in order to make a deal with Putin makes imperial sense.” And the icing on the cake for USA is US$500 billion worth of Ukrainian minerals Trump is demanding from Zelensky.

Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping all have imperial ambitions. Image: X Screengrab Trump, Putin and Xi as co-architects of brave new multipolar world, by Jan Krikke, February 1, 2025, Asia Times

Trump. Putin, Xi, The New Age of Empire, Financial Times, 18 February 2025