BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  AUG 28, 2025 

There’s a telling and disturbing story about Russian President Vladimir Putin in the new book, The Situation Room, by George Stephanopoulos.

During an interview with former President Joe Biden, Stephanopoulos asked him about reports that as Vice President in a 2011 meeting he told Putin he had no soul.

“I did say that to him, yes…I wasn’t being a wise guy,” Biden confirmed. “I was alone with him in his office. And that-that’s how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, ‘I looked in his eyes and saw his soul’, I said I looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul. And he looked back and he said, ‘We understand each other.’”

As I sort through the reams of news reports on Ukraine, now coming every day, all day, that passage haunts me.

The depths of metaphysics are well above my pay grade. I wouldn’t dare delve into the mysteries of the soul with any degree of competence or confidence. I do believe, however, that the exchange between Biden and Putin tells us a lot about the depths of the swamp President Donald Trump finds himself sinking in seeking peace between Ukraine and Russia. It’s murky, dark, deadly, and evil.

And yet, Trump has seemed to lookupon Putin–on and off–with admiration, respect, trust, and disappointment instead of outrage.

In February of this year Trump called Putin a peace partner and blamed the war on Ukraine. A month later he claimed that Putin’s attacks on Ukraine were “what anybody would do.” A month later the Russians killed 34 in Ukraine with a missile attack on Palm Sunday. Trump called it terrible, but said he was told, presumably by Russia, that it was all a mistake. And just weeks ago when a consensus developed in the West for a ceasefire agreement, Trump initially championed it but dropped it like a hot potato after Putin refused to go along at the Alaska summit. So much for facing down your adversary.

The Russian strongman is not a nice man. He is and apparently looks at himself as the reincarnation of Josef Stalin, one of the most evil tyrants in history. It was that former Soviet state that inspired President Ronald Reagan to declare it an “evil empire.”

Putin really does not seem to have a soul (insert your own definition here) and even seems comfortable in that metaphysical state of inhumanity.

The Russian President has waged war against the Ukrainian people for not three, but eleven years since his annexation of Crimea in 2014. He has been dedicated to a vision of the rebirth of the Russian empire of two centuries past, which enveloped the Caucuses and Baltic regions of Eastern Europe. Ukraine is a means to that end, not the end itself, or the beginning of the end, but as Winston Churchill would say the end of the beginning.

Yet, Trump seems convinced that Putin holds the key to peace between the two countries; the conundrum being that peace will come only on Putin’s terms. The first and foremost is the surrender of the Donbas region to Russian annexation.

A memorable response to that demand came in a short letter to the editor in the Washington Post recently by a Donbas native who fled to the United States in 2022 prior to the latest Russian invasion:

“Russia claims it is ‘protecting’ its people in Donbas. That is a lie. Ukrainians in the occupied territories are not waiting for Russian liberation—they are praying for liberation from Russia. They want to live in the country where they were born, where their parents and grandparents are buried. If Donbas remains under Russian control, the war will not end. It will only pause as it has so many times before, until the next invasion.”

Putin continues to kill and maim civilians, kidnap their children, destroy their homes, small villages, and commercial centers where civilians congregate. He has brought the war to the doorsteps of innocent people. All the while, he cynically feigns wanting peace.

Did Trump buy into it? He denied the Ukrainians weapons, funds, intelligence, humanitarian aid, and moral support for the first critical months of his Presidency. He seemed to be stuck on the notion that peace was within easy reach; that he could make a deal. But Trump changed positions so fast you couldn’t see his feet move. He left the nerve-racking impression that he was not guided by the rules of effective diplomacy, had little patience or strategic intent nor benefit from the lessons of history taught so brazenly by Professor Putin. Trump relies mostly on basic gut instincts and motivations that conflict with each other.

Now we learn from the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. since the spring has refused to allow Ukraine “from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems… against targets in Russia…” that limits “Kyiv from employing a powerful weapon its fight against Moscow’s invasion.”

I appreciate the hesitation to do anything that would escalate the conflict, especially when other options still exist, but since the end of World War II, it seems the U.S. fallback strategy has been limited engagement to the extent it emboldens our enemies into believing they just need to outlast us.

Options do exist. The U.S. and the European Union must commit to additional sanctions and secondary sanctions. They must seek other punitive economic actions that put more pressure on the Russian economy. The U.S. and Europe must be firmly united in their support for Ukrainian sovereignty. The idea of an international security agreement for Ukraine is a pipe dream, especially when Russia insists on being a part of any peacekeeping force.

Trump deserves some credit for charging into trouble spots, as he has done with the stagnated immigration crisis, crime, over-regulation, trade inequities, and other long-festering challenges from which his predecessors have shied away. You can disagree with his approach and his behavior (as I do), but he has lit a fire under the government. I just wish he had used a match instead of a blow torch and Congress had applied fire retardant when needed, which is often.

Trump has at times behaved like the mythical Don Quixote spurring on his steed with his lance under his arm fixed squarely on his enemies. He has taken on many challenges. But in too many instances, he has overplayed his hand, taken wrong turns, abused his authority to punish his enemies, circumvented the Constitution, and pitted the branches of government against each other. He has lied about conditions as they exist and about his accomplishments in dealing with them. He has engaged in behavior that on the surface appears courageous but has only proved itself too ill-informed and rambunctious, and dictatorial. As is the case with his dealings with Russia, Ukraine, and our European allies, he has often left a path of destruction and disruption that would rival Attila the Hun.

Instincts are not enough to sustain any cause or successful leader, especially when faced with a man without a soul.