First let me start by saying per the Muller investigation there is far stronger evidence of Trump being "under the thumb" of the UAE, KSA, and Israel than Russia. You know seeing as Trump jr. met with a emissarie of the UAE and KSA, also present was Israeli social media specialist Joel Zamel owner of Wikistrat a company that provides PR for clients using social media. Be it Yamen, pulling out of the Iran deal, or the recent atempt by Trump to lean on Putin to keep Hezbollah away from the Golan Hights (and I think it is fair to speculate he attempted at the recent meeting with Putin to get Putin to lean on Iran to leave Syria entirely).
But as far as being under the thumb goes, I can't think of anyone better to be under than Putin seeing as his geopolitical interest are opposed to the US government's worst geopolitical policies. Those being the arming of Wahabi war lords like Al Din Zenki in Syria, and arming / funding the very real neonazi regime in Ukraine (two weeks ago congress hosted Andriy Parubiy the chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, and the founder of not one but two neo-Nazi parties, and one neonazis militia). I sat there and watched as the media was up in arms over East Ghouta, hell even Democracy NOW was painting Assad and Russia as the bad actors, but East Ghouta was controlled by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham aka al-Qaeda in Lavant and Jaysh al-Islam. HTS and Jaysh were often in conflict because Jaysh was too extreme of HTS. let me repeat that Jaysh al-Islam was too extreme for fucking al Qaeda. Jaysh al-Islam's raison d'etre is to kill every Druze, Alawite, Christian, Yazidi, Shia, Sufi, Suni who isn't Salifist, and of course every "godless commie Kurd". Well I'm glad they cleared the pocket filled with pure unadulterated fascist hell bent on ethnically/religiously cleansing all of Syria. If nothing else, if everyone in this country was informed on the issue, it would be one of the very few things average citizen be them a Democrat, Republican, or independent could agree on, and that being the fact that clearing that pocket was a good thing. I'm sitting watching as neonazi militias under the purview of the Ukrainian government are engaged in a "program" to terrorize and remove the Roma population, I'm sitting and I'm watching congress give a big ole bipartisan welcome to the Neo-Nazi leader of Ukraine. Well what I do know, is providing neonazis (as we all know nazis killed 20 million Russians) with funding and weapons, funding and weapons for Wahabi war lords like Al Din Zenki, and trying to prevent places like East Ghouta and Ildib from being cleared of fascist Salifist, is against Russia's geopolitical interest, and in that regard I can say that I (and I'm 100 % positive the VAST freaking majority of people in this country would agree had they been informed on the topic) have convergent interest with Putin. So here it is, 2018, and all I hear day in and day out, is Democrats pushing the Wolfowitz doctrine and Brizenski's grand chessboard, and I got ask why?