Putin breaks down his isolation, with a big assist from Trump
By PAUL SONNE
He took a rare call from the Finnish and Norwegian leaders. He hosted Qatar’s emir and Iran’s president at a forum of gas-exporting countries.
And he squired African heads of state around a Moscow exhibition, advising them to control social media networks in their own nations, or risk mass protests like those that have gripped France. There, he promoted Russia’s answer to Starlink, but said Russia was in close contact with Elon Musk, whom he called “a brilliant man.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in a frenzy of diplomatic activity in the Russian capital last week that underscored how, nearly five years into his war against Ukraine, he is thwarting Western attempts to isolate him and muscling his way back to center stage in global affairs.
Putin has been winning praise, high-level meeting invitations and concessions from the United States, even while escalating the war and showing no intention of compromising. The news that the Trump administration is considering lifting sanctions on Russia’s flagship government investment fund came after President Donald Trump agreed to import Russian diesel fuel and the U.S. special envoy, Steve Witkoff, praised Putin as a humanitarian.
“In the Kremlin, I think they are really celebrating,” said Stefan Meister, a Russia analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations. He added, “No matter what they are doing or not doing, they are getting things they didn’t even expect.”
Putin is slated to travel to Shenzhen, China, in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, where a possible trilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump would put Russia on apparently equal footing with the two global superpowers. He could then go to Miami in December for the Group of 20 summit, should he accept an invitation that Trump extended, to the dismay of some U.S. allies.
As Putin chips away at his ostracism in the West, relations between the United States and Ukraine have continued to deteriorate, underscoring the country’s vulnerability before what is expected to be the worst winter of the war.
Last month, Trump publicly urged Ukrainians to replace President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and called him an obstacle to peace. Then the Ukrainian military lost some critical access to the military version of Musk’s Starlink satellite internet constellation. Ukraine is running low on U.S.-made air defenses.
For years, Putin has suggested that he can outlast the resolve of Ukraine’s U.S. and European backers. With Trump turning against Ukraine and entertaining more deals with Russia, while unrest and a potential debt crisis boost the far right in France, Putin may feel that his waiting is about to pay off.
“Putin has the impression that he was right,” Meister said. “That he had to wait it out and in the end he can get more than he could have dreamed of from Trump.”
As the rift between the United States and Ukraine grows, Europe has reached a perilous moment, struggling to agree on whether to speak directly to Putin and if so, who should do the talking.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store called Putin on Tuesday, in what Putin later characterized as a sign that some European leaders want constructive dialogue.
The call prompted controversy within Europe, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen accusing the Finnish and Norwegian leaders of “going solo.”
But Meister said the call was a recognition of the danger facing Europe. “They are really afraid there is a breaking point and we are losing the U.S.,” he said.
For weeks, Putin has been criticizing European leaders, accusing them of taking on too much debt, driving up costs for their people by refusing Russian gas, and failing to represent their society’s real interests by sending aid to Ukraine.
“Europe is dealing a blow to its own industry and social sector by abandoning Russian energy supplies and tearing up long-term contracts,” he said at a gas exporters’ event in Moscow on Tuesday. “You know, there is a saying in Russian: ‘Don’t dig a pit for others, or you may fall into it yourself.’”
Hanna Notte, an analyst at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the author of a book on Putin’s foreign policy, “We Shall Outlast Them,” said the Russian leader was clearly aiming his comments at France and Germany, where far-right parties are popular and campaigning on ending support for Ukraine. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen leads in polling for the presidential election next spring.
“This is the line that Russia has been pushing for a while, and it makes total sense to do this ahead of elections in various European countries,” Notte said.
The aim, Notte said, is to convince European voters that politicians “are not acting in the interests of their own people, that they are spending all that money to militarize, to prepare for a war against Russia, instead of dealing with their own social problems at home — exhibit A being France and the protests.”
