How Vladimir Putin is using Donald Trump for his own gain

Whether it’s by backing French ultra-nationalists, the Brexit campaign, or Catalan separatists, the Kremlin believes it benefits every time discord is sown in the West, argues Owen Matthews

NOT since the beginning of the Cold War has a US politician been as fervently pro-Russian as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Just four years after his predecessor, Mitt Romney, declared Russia to be Washington’s greatest geopolitical threat, Mr Trump has praised president Vladimir Putin as a real leader, “unlike what we have in this country”.