Is Russia an Adversary or a Future Partner? Trump’s Aides May Have to Decide.

When the nation’s intelligence chiefs go before Congress on Tuesday to provide their first public “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of President Trump’s second term, they’ll face an extraordinary choice.

Do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and “undermine the United States and the West?”

Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?

The vexing choice has become all the more stark in recent days since Steve Witkoff, one of Mr. Trump’s oldest friends from the real estate world and his chosen envoy to the Mideast and Russia, has begun picking up many of Mr. Putin’s favorite talking points.

Mr. Witkoff wrote off European fears that Russia could violate whatever cease-fire is agreed upon and a peacekeeping force must be assembled to deter Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said the peacekeeping idea was “a combination of a posture and a pose” by America’s closest NATO allies.

It is a view, he said, that was born of a “sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe.” He continued: “I think that’s preposterous.”