Is Donald Trump a Russian asset? I only ask because, over the weekend, it all went rather beyond a joke. Writing on Truth Social, the president made the wicked allegation that the Ukrainian leader was prolonging the war for financial gain. “Zelensky doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him... he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” he ranted.

This latest jibe at the Ukrainian president is the result of a shameful run of events. First, the White House undermined its own sanctions to secure a diesel deal with Russia in the apparent hope of reducing Trump’s losses at the mid-term elections (while greatly strengthening Vladimir Putin’s hand in Ukraine).

Second, the president announced a fictitious “energy ceasefire”, after which the president pressured Zelensky into halting his attacks on Russian oil infrastructure by curbing intelligence sharing and murkily disrupting Elon Musk’s Starlink service.

In the midst of all this, Trump signed an executive order delaying a bi-partisan sanctions package on Russia. Named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, it targeted officials, banks, energy traders and oil apparatus. While suppressing it, the president cited the American national interest, which apparently is now best served by enabling the free world’s enemy to gain power.

This was not a one-off period of indulgence of the Kremlin, produced to alleviate political pressure at home. That would be bad enough, but no: it is part of a very well-established pattern. After all, can you think of any major world leader that Trump has insulted less than Putin? (But who deserves it more?) To be clear, I’m not suggesting that there is any hard evidence to prove my conspiracy theory about Trump. I’m merely pointing out that if he were an agent of the Kremlin, there would be zero difference in his behaviour.

We cannot allow ourselves to forget the orchestrated humiliation of Zelensky in the Oval Office last year – one of the nadirs of American presidential history – after which Trump suspended military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.

Nor can we forget the notorious 28-point “peace” plan, which read like it was drafted in the Kremlin and was heartily supported by Trump.

In February last year, the United States aligned with Russia, China, Belarus and North Korea in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning Kremlin aggression. He also blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion and branded Zelensky a “dictator”.

The year before, when – rightly – railing against European freeloading on American Nato largesse, he threatened to encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want”. And in 2018, during his first term, he sided with Putin against his own intelligence services, which had accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 election.

These are just a few cherry-picked examples of a litany of Putinophile behaviour from America’s most depraved president. What lies behind all this? Perhaps it is Trump’s insatiable infatuation with strongmen (see also his fondness for Islamist Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his flirtation with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in his first term)?

Or is it financial? After all, Trump has long had deep interests in Russia. As long ago as 2008, his son, Donald Jr, told a property conference: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”That same year, in the depths of a property crash, fertiliser oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev bought Trump’s Palm Beach mansion for $95m, more than double the $41m Trump had paid for it four years earlier. Evidence of wrongdoing? Not necessarily.

Nor is the fact that, well into the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, was pursuing a Trump Tower in Moscow. This was a project about which he later lied to Congress.

Let’s not forget too that Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, worked for pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and shared internal polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, who was later described as a “former Russian intelligence officer” by a bipartisan Senate committee.

So what is the likely explanation for Trump’s myriad actions and statements that, at least on paper, seem to favour Russia and Putin?

In my view, it is not so much a handler dictating lines from in a Moscow basement, but something more straightforward: a toxic cocktail of vanity, venality, admiration for strongmen, contempt for allies and a transactional world-view in which the crown jewels of democracy are personal bargaining chips, whatever the blood-cost to Kyiv.

I should add: if Trump were a Russian asset, would he really make it this obvious?