They will face an extraordinary choice when the national intelligence chief moves ahead of Congress on Tuesday to provide the first “global threat assessment” of President Trump's second term.
Are they stuck to long-standing conclusions about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin?
Or will they cast Putin on the condition that Trump and his top negotiators with Russia have recently described him: control over some of his legitimate him, Ukraine, and resume regular relationships with the US, as a trusted future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war?
The nasty choice has become even more stringent these days, since Steve Witkov, one of Trump's oldest friends from the real estate world and one of his chosen envoys to the Middle East and Russia, began picking up many of Putin's favorite topics.
Witkov reported Europe's fear that Russia could violate what a ceasefire had been agreed to and that peacekeeping forces had to be constructed to stop Moscow. In an interview with Pro Magazine Podcaster Tucker Carlson, Witkoff said the idea of peacekeeping was a “combination of posture and pose” by America's closest NATO allies.
He said the view came from “the conception that we all would march through Europe, like Winston Churchill.” He continued: “I think that's ridiculous.”
Just three years after Russian forces poured into Kiev and tried to take the government away, Witkov insisted that Putin really didn't want to take over everything in Ukraine.
“Why do they want to absorb Ukraine?” he asked Carlson. “For what purpose, exactly? They don't need to absorb Ukraine.” He argues that all Russia he claims is “stability there.”
“I thought he was straightened to me,” Witkov said of Putin. Putin is an impressive feature of a longtime American enemy and master of deception.
It is the will that seemingly believe in Putin, who has probably been the all-head-driven reversal in Washington, in the recent all-headed reversal of Washington, perhaps the Trump administration's view on Russia and the most confused Putin.
Before Trump took office, when he first insisted that there was a part of Russia that they needed to restore to their homeland, it was the consensus view of the US and its allies that they were hopelessly naive about Russia's true ambitions when he first insisted in 2007 that there was a part of Russia that they needed to restore. He then invaded Georgia, annexed to Crimea, and sent troops from uniforms to carry out a guerrilla war at the Donbass.
Still, sanctions were slow to apply, and Europe was too late to run through Reim. This is the point when Trump himself pushed Europeans to more funds to protect himself.
Now, Trump refuses to reveal that Russia has invaded Ukraine. He openly contradicts European leaders who say that even if the US wanted normalisation of relations with Russia, they would not. “I don't trust Putin,” British Prime Minister Kiel Starmer told The New York Times last week. “I am confident that President Putin will try to insist that Ukraine should be vulnerable after the transaction.
But for the American intelligence agency, which is believed to be rooted in a rigorous analysis of secretly collected open source analyses, there has never been any indication that their views on Putin and his ambitions have changed. So it's up to Tulsi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the new CIA, to walk the subtle lines of describing Russia as a current enemy and future partner.
Witkoff went that path in a conversation with Carlson. “We might share sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas together to Europe and maybe we'll work together on AI together,” he said. “Who doesn't want to see such a world?”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a ranking Democrat for the Chamber of Commerce Intelligence Email Committee, said comments by Witcoff and others in the Trump administration are deeply disorienting to American spies.
“If you know all the terrible things Vladimir Putin did and you know that it's suddenly changing into a completely Russian aspect of attitude, how do you understand that?” Warner said.
Warner said the annual threat assessment, the document released by the Intelligence Reporting Agency on Tuesday is very traditional and is in line with previous versions. But what Trump's intellectual leaders say in his testimony is less clear. So far, Warner said the regime's comments on Ukraine are nothing more than traditional views on the threat from Russia.
Warner said changing US policies regarding Russia threatens the Intelligence Report Partnership. The United States collects far more intelligence than other countries, but it said that it combines the contributions of its major allies with considerable value. And if their concerns about American policy and faithful analysis of its intelligence grows, they share less.
Officials from several allies wary of Witkov's statements, saying they closely reflect the points of Russia's story, refusing to talk about the records. He approved a Russian “referendum” in four major Ukrainian provinces that were widely considered equipped as if voters were tortured and deported if they voted in the wrong way. But Witkov spoke as if they were just a legitimate election.
“There was a referendum that the overwhelming majority of people showed they wanted to be under Russian rule,” he said. Shortly afterwards, Oleksandr Meretzko, chair of the Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Monday that Witkov should be removed from his position.
“These are simply dishonorable and shocking statements,” Meletsko told Ukrainian media. “He is broadcasting Russian propaganda, and I have a question.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was more cautious in an interview with Time Magazine released on Monday. He said he believes “Russia has influenced some of the White House team through information.” Previously he had spoken about the “website of disinformation” surrounding Trump, saying it contributed to their famous poor relationship.
He said Trump has repeated Putin's claim that the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops in western Russia is under siege.
“That was a lie,” Zelensky said.
Certain Mehus contributed a report from Kiev.
