I really don’t care what you think the motivations are, because it doesn’t matter. This move is bad for American interests, no matter what the motive.
Since when are the State Dept's interests the same as those of the American people? See Saudi friggin Arabia.
I’ve asked Putinator (aka, “Trumpinator”) here over 12 or 13 times now to tell us what he personally thinks of KGB Putin, his expansionist agenda in Europe, his terminally “silencing” his political opponents/critics, Russia’s long history of arming and supporting America’s enemies, etc, etc, but he refuses to answer, though he seems to post a quick response to everything else. In fact, he can’t manage to come up with a single negative thing to say about the KGB thug. He’s had that opportunity for about 2 days now.