Ella Baron on Trump’s admiration for Putin – cartoon
Analysis: Published on October 25, 2026, in The Guardian, Ella Baron’s expressive illustration visually portrays Donald Trump in a grotesque strongman posture (“Trump as strongman” in the Guardian Cartoons archive), capturing his ideological fixation on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Accompanying reports that Putin has proposed a trilateral summit among himself, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping to settle the war in Ukraine, the artwork critiques Washington’s pivot away from traditional European allies toward transactional great-power bargaining over oil and territory. The cartoon matters strategically because it encapsulates growing European anxiety that US unilateralism and affinity for rival powers are fracturing the Western alliance into a tripolar global order.