Party PLANNING

Putin wants Trump to win, of course, and he's got big ideas about a new world order. Think Yalta-on Fiji

- Mikhail Zygar

I DON’T KNOW which moment in US history former president Donald Trump imagines when he says, “Make America great again.” He has never given a definitive answer in any speech or interview. But I know exactly which moment Vladimir Putin imagines in his own vision for Russian greatness. It is February 1945, when Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill divided the world in Crimea.

Three months remained before the surrender of Nazi Germany, but it was clear the Allies were winning. To determine what the world would look like after the defeat of the Third Reich, the Soviet premier, US president, and British prime minister went to the city of Yalta, a resort area on the Black Sea. Stalin achieved everything he wanted: He convinced his then allies that he should have his own “sphere of influence,” which included all of Eastern Europe—Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and what were then Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The leaders also devised the United Nations Security Council, on which they secured permanent seats for their countries.

This structure existed for the next 45 years, de facto collapsing along with the Soviet Union. Putin once called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” Throughout his presidency Putin has said the world needs a “new Yalta.” If the old world order no longer works, a new one must be invented.

He began talking about this in 2007 during his famous Munich speech, in which he challenged the US-dominated unipolar world order for the first time, and has repeated the proposal many times since, including in his speech at the UN in 2015, in Davos in 2021, and in his addresses to the Russian parliament almost every year. But for a new Yalta, Putin needs suitable partners, including a US president who would agree to divide the world with him.