Vladimir Putin scores a big victory, and not on the battlefield
For President Vladimir Putin, one phone call marked a turning point as great as any battle in his three-year war. In a lengthy call Wednesday, President Donald Trumpdelivered a message to Putin that encapsulated much of how the Russian leader sees today's world: that Russia and the United States are two great nations that should negotiate Ukraine's fate directly and move on to addressing even weightier global affairs.
It was the clearest sign yet that Putin, despite Russia's disastrous failures at the outset of his Ukraine invasion in early 2022, could still emerge from the war with a redrawn map of Europe and an expansion of Russia's influence in it.
The call came on the same day that Trump's defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared that the United States would not support Ukraine's desire for NATO membership.
It also came as the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, widely seen as sympathetic to Putin, as the next director of national intelligence.
Taken together, the developments marked a payoff for Putin's monthslong campaign of lavishing praise on Trump — apparently in the belief that the U.S. president has the power to deliver a Russian victory in Ukraine.
«Putin is playing a very clever game,» said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centerin Berlin.
«He's investing 100% into the effort to seduce Trump.»
In Moscow, news of the long-awaited call ushered in a wave of barely contained glee. Commentators claimed that the U.S.-led three-year effort to isolate Russia had emphatically ended.
They celebrated Trump's glowing social media post after the call about «the Great History of Our Nations» and noted that the U.S. president had spoken to Putin before he had called President Volodymyr
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