Vladimir Putin plays the long game. For decades, the Russian leader has worked to subjugate Ukraine. For decades, he has also cultivated ties with Donald Trump. Now, success at the latter endeavor is allowing Putin to recover from failures at the former: after nearly five years of thwarted Russian objectives in the war on Ukraine, the U.S. president is helping him win. By easing sanctions on Russia, cutting military and economic assistance to Ukraine, disrupting intelligence cooperation, and pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Putin’s war aims, Trump is making Russia’s successful annexation of substantial Ukrainian territory and de facto control over Kyiv’s future decisions more likely than at almost any point since February 2022.
Since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, battlefield momentum has swung back and forth between the two sides. Russian forces had the advantage at the start. But by the fall of 2022, Ukraine had seized the offensive, liberating so much territory once held by Russian troops that Washington worried Putin might use a nuclear weapon to stop Ukrainian advances. The war then settled into a tragic grind on the frontline—until last spring. Momentum returned to Ukraine after Kyiv deployed new long-range missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Russia, new midrange drones able to attack Russian supply routes in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, and improved interceptor drones that could better defend against Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities. Putin’s army proved unable to advance on the frontline; Ukrainian troops even made incremental progress in liberating territory.
But Trump has helped return the momentum to Russia. Stymied at the frontline, Putin has shifted his focus to terrorizing Ukrainian society through rocket and drone strikes on both civilians and the infrastructure their livelihood depends on—energy and water in particular—driven by the hope that a suffering population would pressure Zelensky to capitulate. New weaponry has made this terrorist campaign especially brutal, in particular the mass production of ballistic missiles and a new drone, the Geran 5, equipped with a powerful Chinese rocket engine that Ukrainian air defenses cannot intercept. Because Russia has more troops, greater military production capacity, and some new and better weapons, Putin believes that he can afford to persist despite the seeming stalemate.
Trump’s support has bolstered Putin’s belief that time is on his side. In just the last few weeks, Trump and his allies have expanded his help to Moscow: suspending sanctions, buying Russian diesel, disrupting Ukraine’s access to Starlink and Starshield communications systems, and even insisting that Zelensky must go. “It is equally clear that when some partners ease the pressure on Russia,” Zelensky has noted, “it only reinforces Putin’s belief that his goals are within reach.” The combination of less support from the United States, especially when it comes to air defenses, and faster Russian drones and more missiles will make the coming winter the most brutal yet for Ukrainians.
OUR MAN IN WASHINGTON
Putin’s long game with Trump began years ago, driven not so much by some specific objective, but by the hope that Kremlin influence on him might someday prove useful—a common KGB tactic. Now that day has come.
Years before Trump first ran for president, Russian actors close to Putin pursued business ties with the then real estate mogul, including most famously when Trump collaborated with Emin and Aras Agalarov to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013. Putin then orchestrated unprecedented foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump and hurt his opponent Hillary Clinton. Whether the Russian theft and publication of Clinton campaign emails, combined with a comprehensive social media effort to bolster Trump, affected the 2016 election outcome is impossible to prove. That Putin was trying to influence the result is without question.
In 2017, Putin’s cultivation of Trump started to deliver some atmospheric benefits. Trump made clear his admiration for the Russian dictator. More shockingly, during his summit with Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Trump expressed doubt about the findings of his intelligence community regarding Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and instead endorsed Putin’s denial. Yet in his first term, Trump’s rhetorical adulation of Putin only marginally changed actual U.S. policy toward Russia, in part because several senior officials on Trump’s national security team—National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—constrained Trump from making a full pro-Russia pivot.
After Trump’s reelection, in 2024, the Kremlin’s long courtship started to produce more tangible results. Most consequentially, Trump ended direct U.S. military and economic assistance to Ukraine. Before then, the United States was Ukraine’s biggest backer. Trump has still allowed American companies to sell some arms to European governments, who then transfer them to Ukraine. But even that channel has been disrupted periodically and only amounts to a trickle of weapons and ammunition compared with what the United States previously provided. And what Ukraine needs most—interceptors for its Patriot missile defense systems—are in very short supply, in part because the United States has launched so many of them during Trump’s war with Iran.
No future president is likely to continue Trump’s Russia policy.
Other U.S. steps have further undermined Ukraine and aided Russia. Trump has insisted that Ukraine would never join NATO. He gave Putin red-carpet treatment at an Alaska summit last year, at which the two presidents talked about pressuring Ukraine to give up the rest of the eastern region of the Donbas, which Putin has been trying to conquer since 2014. Trump has periodically berated Zelensky, including most dramatically at a February 2025 Oval Office meeting, when he cut off Zelensky and yelled, “You’ve done enough talking. You’re not winning this . . . You don’t have the cards.” Since then, Trump has occasionally zagged back to more cordial relations with the Ukrainian president. But Trump has returned to expressing open hostility, echoing Putin by proclaiming that it’s “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
In the last two weeks, Trump has increased support for Putin’s war. He lifted sanctions to allow the sale of Russian diesel exports, which will provide Moscow with billions of dollars to help finance military operations. He issued an executive order suspending new sanctions outlined in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which he had signed just weeks earlier. There have been new lapses in sharing certain kinds of intelligence that only the United States can provide. Most consequentially, Ukraine has experienced disruptions in its access to Starlink and Starshield communications systems provided by SpaceX (a company owned by Elon Musk, a major backer and ally of Trump and a former official in his administration). Kyiv needs both services to guide its own drones and to track and defend against Russian drones and rockets. Whether the U.S. government or Musk independently ordered the disruptions is still not clear. But the results of the disruptions were clear: more Russian drones and rockets hit more Ukrainian targets, including innocent civilians; more Russian weaponry moved closer to the frontline; and more Ukrainian drones fell out of the air.
Through their teams, Putin and Trump have also been negotiating new business deals, including the purchase of assets owned by a major Russian oil company, Lukoil, by American investors; the sale of a currently dormant gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, connecting Germany and Russia; and even secret Russian investments in a liquefied natural gas project in Alaska. If they move forward, all these projects will provide Putin with new revenues to underwrite his war in Ukraine.
CAN THE PENDULUM SWING BACK?
Ukrainians are not giving up; according to polls, a solid majority still think that their country should keep fighting. Nor are Europeans quitting on Ukraine. Although Putin hoped that the withdrawal of American military and economic aid early in Trump’s second term would lead to a quick Ukrainian collapse or capitulation, he did not anticipate how willing and capable European countries would be in filling the American void. What’s more, Ukrainian defense tech companies are working frantically to develop new weapons to intercept the rapidly rising number of Russian ballistic missiles and speedy Geran 5 drones. Right now, the pendulum has swung in Russia’s direction, but the Ukrainians have defied expectations and regained momentum many times in the past; they can do it again.
U.S. policy could also change, especially after the midterm elections. American society does not support Trump’s embrace of Putin and abandonment of Ukraine, making it politically hard for the administration to maintain this policy pivot. If Democrats win control of one or both houses of Congress in midterm elections next week, they could very well use their new electoral mandate to investigate American-Russian business deals; introduce new legislation to restart American military and economic assistance to Ukraine and outlaw Starlink and Starshield disruptions; or deploy legislative action to enforce existing sanctions laws. Even Trump himself has stepped back from Putin before—he once wondered out loud whether Putin was “tapping me along.” He could do so again.
Putin should also realize that his cultivation of Trump is a wasting asset. No future president—Democrat or Republican—is likely to continue Trump’s Russia policy. And next week, Trump will become a lame duck, whose power to shape U.S. policy toward Russia will decline over the next two years. Putin would be wise, accordingly, to get serious about negotiating a cease-fire now. His odds of getting a favorable deal will only diminish from here.
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