When talking about U.S. President Donald Trump and his turn against Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to avoid public displays of triumph. After his first acknowledged conversation with Trump following the U.S. president\u2019s return to the White House, on February 12, Putin has said that the initial goal of U.S.-Russian talks is simply to increase trust between the parties. When they talked again, for two hours on March 18, the Kremlin\u2019s official statement indicated that \u201cthe leaders confirmed their intention to continue efforts aimed at reaching a settlement in Ukraine bilaterally.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Moscow\u2019s gloating is hard to miss. \u201cThe U.S. is taking a much more balanced position,\u201d said the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in February, two weeks after the first call. \u201cWe certainly welcome this.\u201d In a press release after the second call, the Kremlin \u201cexpressed gratitude to Donald Trump for his desire to help achieve the noble goal of ending hostilities.\u201d It would be shocking if they weren\u2019t grateful: in less than two months, Trump has presented Russia with greater symbolic and material victories than the country could have fathomed. After Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky<\/a> fought in the Oval Office on February 28, Trump temporarily suspended U.S. military assistance to Kyiv. Washington withdrew from a group dedicated to investigating war crimes by Russia\u2019s leaders. It voted against a UN resolution that blamed Moscow for the war. And Trump and his senior officials repeatedly parroted Russian disinformation about the conflict, including by blaming it on Kyiv.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s leadership is aware that Trump\u2019s warmth may not last forever. The president is emotionally volatile and has a short attention span. The experience of his first term, when the Kremlin\u2019s hopes for a major improvement in U.S.-Russian ties were dashed after Congress imposed new sanctions on Russia and the White House delivered lethal weapons to Ukraine, serves as a cautionary tale. At a minimum, it is unlikely that the administration will unquestioningly accept all the Kremlin\u2019s maximalist demands.<\/p>\n But Moscow is preparing to milk Trump<\/a> for as much and as long as it can. The Kremlin hopes it can secure a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump in which they hammer out a deal that stops the war in Ukraine for now\u2014exactly what Trump wants\u2014in exchange for provisions that leave Ukraine permanently weakened. Putin favors an agreement that would place all kinds of restrictions on Kyiv and give Moscow a permanent voice in Ukrainian politics. But he would probably settle for one that limited Western support for the Ukrainian armed forces. Such a cutoff, the Kremlin figures, would be enough to ensure that Moscow eventually defeated Kyiv. Putin would be happy even if the Ukrainians and their European allies rejected the deal. Trump would then have a reason to permanently end U.S. support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n Even if Putin cannot talk Trump into abandoning Ukraine, he still hopes to permanently repair other elements of U.S.-Russian relations, in part to lessen sanctions. But should that effort also fail, Russia\u2019s leader will simply carry on as he has been. The Russian economy is struggling, but it is stable. Moscow has a massive manpower advantage over Kyiv. Putin hopes Washington will tacitly help him defeat Ukraine<\/a>. But he is ready to fight on even if it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n GREATEST ASSET<\/p>\n The Kremlin tried to start communicating with Trump almost as soon as he won the 2024 presidential election. It reached out to the then president-elect through formal Russian and U.S. intelligence channels. But it also reactivated links to various figures in Trump\u2019s orbit. Most notably, Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, used his ties to Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and other members of the president\u2019s family to reach Steve Witkoff\u2014Trump\u2019s special envoy for the Middle East. (Witkoff is now also overseeing diplomacy with Moscow.) This connection led to a prisoner exchange and, on February 18, a high-profile meeting in Riyadh, where Dmitriev and Witkoff were joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and the Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov. The parties agreed to work toward ending the war and bettering bilateral relations.<\/p>\n Critically, this outreach also led to the two conversations between Trump and Putin<\/a> himself. These talks appeared to have greatly shaped the U.S. president\u2019s thinking. Trump was never a fan of Zelensky, but after the February 12 call with Putin, Trump began echoing Russian talking points, calling Zelensky a \u201cdictator\u201d and fretting about corruption in Ukraine. Putin, meanwhile, has parroted the Trump campaign\u2019s narrative that if the 2020 U.S. election had not been \u201cstolen,\u201d Moscow would not have had any reason to go to war with Kyiv. The Russian leader, a former KGB recruiting officer, appears to have figured out how to manipulate Trump\u2019s ego so that he adopts the Kremlin\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s machinations go beyond just playing to Trump\u2019s own predilections. Moscow has also won over the White House by positioning itself as a great power willing to advance Trump\u2019s global agenda. Russia has expressed readiness to help the United States broker a deal with Iran. It has embraced Trump\u2019s idea of slashing each country\u2019s military budgets in half, and it has hinted that it can help bring China into that conversation. Rubio and Vance have even spoken of an opportunity to implement what some analysts call a \u201creverse Nixon\u201d strategy by driving a wedge between Beijing and Moscow\u2014just as U.S. President Richard Nixon did 50 years earlier, then to isolate the Kremlin. Such an effort would be utterly futile: the Kremlin won\u2019t rock the boat with its most important geopolitical and economic partner, especially when the next U.S. president might do another U-turn in Washington\u2019s Russia policy. But Moscow has won over Rubio, Vance, and Trump by quietly suggesting it might move out of China\u2019s embrace if Washington gives Moscow some breathing space, such as by easing sanctions.<\/p>\n Putin appears to have figured out how to manipulate Trump\u2019s ego.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n