For adopting a position that recognized that after its centuries of incumbency in Ukraine, Russia had some residual rights there, President Trump has been widely denigrated as a virtual catspaw of the Kremlin. Of course, this is nonsense, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite his swagger as he regularly trots off to Beijing to pay his obeisances, cannot escape the facts that Russia has a GDP smaller than Canada’s, that this war has gone on longer than the titanic Russo-German struggle of 1941-1945, that Russia has suffered approximately a million casualties and over half a million deserters and draft evaders, and has not made any appreciable gains in the last two years. This war has not only been a disaster for Russia; it signifies that the stronger of the former Soviet republics have legitimately seceded from Russian control, and Russia will not again revive the empire of Peter the Great and Stalin nor exercise the influence that they and other Russian leaders have intermittently enjoyed in central Europe. Russia is an important nationality that ultimately belongs in the West, but it has no chance to rival the United States again.