As Trump Out-Putins Putin, Russia’s Global Influence Erodes

The conflict in Iran may give Moscow a short-term boost economically and in Ukraine. But it has also shown the limits of Russia’s partnerships.

One early beneficiary of the full-scale U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran has been President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

His government is profiting from higher oil and gas prices that could ease Russia’s economic woes. He is throwing around the country’s geopolitical weight as an alternative energy supplier. And he stands to gain on his own battlefield if the Middle East conflict strains the supply of U.S.-made air defenses for Ukraine.

But Mr. Putin is also grappling with the arrival of a new world of unbridled American power under President Trump, which is checking Russia’s global influence and ripping up Moscow’s playbook for partnerships abroad.

For years, Mr. Putin supported anti-American authoritarian governments in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, with little worry that Washington would use its overwhelming military power to kill, capture or push out their leaders. That has now changed, as Mr. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to disregard international norms and engage in foreign adventurism by fully exploiting Washington’s might.

Even though Iran came to Russia’s aid with critical drones at the outset of Mr. Putin’s bungled invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Russia has stood aside as the United States and Israel have pummeled Iran’s leadership and military. Moscow has issued little more than condemnatory statements that largely avoid naming Mr. Trump.

“It shows the limits of, ‘What does it mean to be a partner of Russia?’” said Angela Stent, a Russia expert and professor emerita at Georgetown University. She said the case of Iran was particularly stark given Tehran’s pivotal role in aiding Moscow in Ukraine.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Thursday that Moscow had not received any requests for assistance from Iran and that “the war that’s going on isn’t our war.”

Washington’s actions against Russia-friendly leaders have come at a head-spinning pace.

The last two months have brought the U.S.-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the U.S. capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela; and a U.S. economic blockade intended to oust the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. In every case, Russia has offered little help.

An American president pursuing foreign heads of state in their homes and offices, unchecked by Congress, has also flipped the script on Mr. Putin, who has made his appetite for risk, willingness to use force and unpredictability central to his coercive power in the world.

“Now he’s no longer the baddest guy in town,” said Bobo Lo, a Russia analyst and former Australian diplomat in Moscow.

“He no longer is able to strike fear in the way that he had hoped. That mantle has gone over to Trump,” Mr. Lo said. “And so Putin looks, in a way, a little bit pathetic.”

The reality is that there is not much that Russia, already tied down in Ukraine, could have done to protect Iran, short of declaring war on the United States or Israel, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research institute in Berlin.

Iran was already weakened by an economic and political crisis, the backdrop to failures that allowed the United States and Israel to kill Khamenei in the conflict’s opening hours.

“Given the intelligence penetration of Iran that was revealed, there was very little that Russia, even in tandem with China, could have done to undo this,” Mr. Gabuev said.

But while Mr. Putin may be holding back now, he can play a longer game. Mr. Trump has made clear that he does not necessarily intend to unseat the Russia-friendly elites in the countries where he has intervened and engage in “democracy building.” That leaves open the possibility for Mr. Putin to keep ties with them.

Russia has also seen that Mr. Trump’s second-term impulses in foreign affairs can cut both ways.

Mr. Trump has asserted U.S. power in nations that Mr. Putin considers his own backyard, including by hosting Central Asian leaders and brokering a peace pledge between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But in other cases Mr. Trump’s actions have benefited the Kremlin beyond its dreams.

Mr. Trump’s public Oval Office showdown with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last year elated Moscow. So did Mr. Trump’s dismantling of U.S.A.I.D., which the Kremlin long viewed as an American tool for foreign meddling, and the U.S. president’s attacks against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

And Mr. Trump’s threats this year to take Greenland from Denmark risked rupturing NATO from within, advancing Mr. Putin’s longstanding goal of destroying the Western military alliance.

Mr. Putin has been withholding any public criticism of Mr. Trump as the Russian leader tries to secure what is most important to him: his desired outcome in Ukraine.

In an interview with Politico on Thursday, Mr. Trump once again took aim at Mr. Zelensky, not Mr. Putin, as the obstacle to peace. Though Ukrainian forces took more territory than they lost in the last two weeks of February, the first such gain since 2023, according to the Institute for the Study of War, Mr. Trump repeated what he had said to Mr. Zelensky a year ago in the Oval Office: “You don’t have the cards.”

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