Putin is sending a not-so-friendly message to Trump

Is Vlad dissing the Donald? It sure looks like it.

A few days ago, Russia’s prime-time “60 Minutes” program congratulated Melania Trump on her husband’s electoral victory by displaying on air a handful of nude photographs of the future first lady that had originally appeared in GQ Magazine in 2000.

President-elect Trump may or may not have found the photographs to be offensive, but he was likely miffed by their appearance in Putin’s propaganda media. Make no mistake, it was Putin, and not the program’s obnoxious hosts Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeeva, who decided to show the pics. That both were visibly amused only underlined the degree to which the photos were meant to embarrass, not to celebrate.

It gets worse. Not only did Putin show the photos, but he did so before formally congratulating Trump on his victory, while also denying the veracity of the Washington Post’s report that he had spoken with Trump by telephone.

None of this is serendipitous. Putin is obviously sending some kind of message. But what and to whom? Several possibilities come to mind.

It may be that Putin is intimating that he possesses embarrassing “kompromat” on him. Rumors of such compromising materials have been circulating since the first Trump presidency, although they haven’t been substantiated. If it is true, Putin might be warning Trump not to go too far with his peace plans.

It may also be that Putin is playing hard to get, especially when one considers his delayed congratulations and denial of the phone call. In this scenario, which doesn’t contradict the first, Putin may be telling Trump that he doesn’t need him or the U.S. to start negotiations, and that he’ll end the war against Ukraine on his own. In other words, Putin is telling Trump to stay out of his business.

Finally, it’s possible that Putin’s target audience is Russian — both the masses and the elites. Accordingly, Putin is fully in charge, while Trump is the cuckolded husband who can’t behave like a tough Russian, a “muzhik,” and keep his wife under control. Many average Russians will likely giggle along with Skabeeva and wonder how Trump and his crazy Americans can possibly outmaneuver their genius leader. In contrast, Russian elites will get a charge out of Trump’s possible anger, but may see through Putin’s transparent attempt to strengthen his position by making Trump look weak.

Whichever interpretation is correct — and they could all be — the fact of the matter is that Putin really does not have much to crow about. His games with the Trumps are just games, bespeaking weakness and failure.

Do serious leaders really resort to publishing nude photographs of their interlocutors’ spouses? Do serious people really think that such tasteless displays can possibly intimidate their opponents? Can they really not believe that such cheap tricks can only have the effect of making them look ridiculous?

We don’t know how much Putin knows about actual conditions on the front in Ukraine. Does he know that well over 700,000 Russians have been killed or wounded? Does he know that roughly 1,500 soldiers are dying or being wounded every day? His bizarre claim at the recent Valdai conference that Russia has surrounded thousands of Ukrainians in Kursk Province suggests that he’s completely out of touch with reality on the front — or that he’s just lying.

Putin presumably knows that his own officials publicly worry about the unsustainability of his economic policy, but then how can we be sure that he’s not being protected from bad news? Subordinates everywhere always tell autocrats what they want to hear. For all we know, Putin may be living in blissful ignorance.

The important thing is that, whether or not he knows the true state of affairs in Ukraine, Russia and the front, Russia is losing the war, and its hand in any forthcoming negotiations will therefore be weak. Russia’s human losses are unsustainable, unless North Korea’s Kim Jong Un decides to transport his entire army to Russia. Recent Russian territorial gains, bizarrely termed significant or strategic by gullible Western commentators, amount to less than 0.5 percent of Ukraine’s territory.

Putin will bluster and bluff, of course, but he will be in no position to make demands if both the Americans and Ukrainians know how weak his hand is. The Ukrainians know. The question is, does Trump?

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”