Putin Played the Long Game. It Seems to Be Paying Off

 

"More than a decade before Russia's armed forces poured over the border into Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin stood before world leaders and delivered a long, icy speech demanding a radical overhaul of the world order.

"We have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security," Putin said in 2007 speech in Munich, accusing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of breaking a promise by expanding into Eastern Europe, and calling for an end to U.S. hegemony.

Tensions between Moscow and the West grew in the years that followed. Russia sent its military into Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine spurred a broad Western effort to isolate Moscow and pushed new countries into NATO.

Putin dug in as his military suffered battlefield setbacks and his economy was squeezed by Western sanctions. He played the long game. Now, that perseverance appears to be paying off as the world shifts decisively in his direction. The U.S. has paused military aid to Ukraine and called for an end to Moscow's isolation. It is distancing itself from traditional allies in Europe.

"We all see how rapidly the world is changing," Putin told his security services on Thursday, after a U.S.-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia. Moscow and Washington, he said, are now ready to address "strategic problems in the architecture of the world."

Even Putin's most hawkish advisers have been surprised by the speed with which the tone coming from the White House has changed, say people who travel to Moscow and speak with Russian officials.

"The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of President Trump's team.

Trump, who had been calling for both sides to end the war, recently turned his attention decisively to Ukraine. He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator and blamed him for starting the war, echoing Moscow. That culminated in an on-camera clash Friday between the Ukrainian leader and Trump.

In Munich last month, Vice President JD Vance said the erosion of democracy in Europe posed a greater threat to the continent than Russia or China -- a common Putin claim.

"We haven't seen this before," said Sergey Radchenko, a Russia historian and author of a new book on Moscow's Cold War strategy. "Not just the political realignment, but the alignment of values."

For Putin, the moment is also a vindication of the patient strategy he has honed during a quarter-century in power. The former KGB agent elevated from obscurity to lead Russia at the turn of the millennium has railed passionately against the U.S.-led world order ushered in by the Soviet collapse in 1991, which Putin has called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

The sentiments Putin voiced in Munich stem from grievances toward the U.S. that deepened in 2004, according to Thomas Graham, a former White House adviser on Russia to George W. Bush. That year, a Western-backed revolution convulsed Ukraine, and Chechen separatists stormed a school in Russia's North Caucasus region. Putin blamed the U.S. for encouraging the separatist movement.

"Those two events led Putin to believe that the United States really wasn't interested in a partnership with Russia, that counterterrorism and democracy promotion were really just smokescreens for America's geopolitical advance into the former Soviet space at Russia's expense," said Graham. "He concluded at that point that the goal of the United States was really to erode Russia's standing as a great power."

Putin's 2007 speech made clear for the first time the depth of his anger about perceived U.S. arrogance. But many Western officials appeared to dismiss Putin's warning at the time.

"One Cold War was quite enough," Robert Gates, the U.S. defense secretary at the time, said in response.

The following year Russia was in conflict with Georgia and seized control of two pro-Russian enclaves in that ex-Soviet republic, prompting no meaningful Western response. The administration of Barack Obama sought a "reset" with Moscow under Russia's interim President Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin's return to the presidency in 2012 was followed by a crackdown on dissent and deepening suspicion of the West.

Relations tanked when Putin reunited with Crimea in 2014 and sent his army into eastern Ukraine.

In response to events in Ukraine in 2022, former President Joe Biden hit Moscow with sanctions and promised to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes."

After Trump's victory last year, Putin launched a charm offensive, echoing statements about the 2020 election and praising Trump's response to the attempt on his life in July.

Now, with Trump bringing Moscow in from the cold and suspending crucial military assistance to Kyiv, he sees an opportunity to fundamentally change Russia's position in the world, analysts say.

What he wants is far more than a simple settlement to end the fighting. Putin's goal is to turn Ukraine into a neutered state, and bar the country from rearming with Western support. His ambition is to force NATO out of Eastern Europe.

Radchenko said the current moment has historical parallels to the period following World War II, when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sought U.S. agreement to divide Europe into spheres of influence. The U.S. instead remained engaged in the continent, acting as a guarantor of security, and limiting Stalin's ambitions. Today, he says, the Kremlin is advancing a similar vision. "But what I find remarkable is that it's the Trump administration that is now also embracing this vision of the world."" [1]

 
1. World News: Putin Played the Long Game. It Seems to Be Paying Off. Luxmoore, Matthew.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 05 Mar 2025: A6.