When Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vladimir Putin had reasons to think his patience with the war in Ukraine was about to pay off.
The Kremlin had long argued that the conflict was never really about Ukraine at all, but about redrawing the security architecture of eastern Europe and, more ambitiously, carving the world into spheres of influence managed by a handful of great powers.
A Trump administration sceptical of NATO's eastward reach, irritated by the cost of arming Kyiv and drawn to deals between strongmen, looked from Moscow like the opening Russia had been waiting for.
That reading was not baseless. Through 2025, the new administration pursued talks with Moscow that treated Ukraine's territorial losses as a starting point for negotiation rather than a violation to be reversed, and floated peace terms that would have let Russia keep the bulk of what it occupies.
Vice President JD Vance, who had argued in the Senate that continued funding for Kyiv made little strategic sense, became the most visible face of that retrenchment once in office, later calling the decision to halt direct American arms transfers to Ukraine one of the administration's โproudest achievements.โ
Washington's own updated national security strategy, published in December, drew a public comment from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov describing it as closely aligned with Russia's own thinking.
For a Kremlin that has spent years telling itself history bends toward multipolarity, all of this looked like early proof that a U.S.-Russia-China triumvirate, each power secure in its own backyard, was finally within reach.
A bet that didn't pay off
It has not worked out that way. Europe did not fold once Washington pulled back. If anything, the retreat of direct American support pushed European governments toward a harder posture rather than a softer one, with member states picking up a growing share of the military bill and tightening the net around Russia's shadow fleet of sanctions-evading tankers.
