How Donald Trump’s aggressive foreign policy is weakening Vladimir Putin’s global influence

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 US-made air defenses for Ukraine.But Putin is also grappling with the arrival of a new world of unbridled American power under President Donald Trump, which is checking Russia’s global influence and ripping up Moscow’s playbook for partnerships abroad.
For years, 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 Trump has demonstrated a willingness to disregard international norms and engage in foreign adventurism fully exploiting Washington’s might.
Even though Iran came to Russia’s aid with critical drones at the outset of Putin’s 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 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.Story continues below this ad
A photo made during a government-led media tour shows passers in Tehran on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, surveying the wreckage of a police station that was destroyed a US-Israeli airstrike. 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. (Credits: Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times)
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined Friday to say how Moscow was helping Iran in its moment of need. A day earlier he said, “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 past two months have brought the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the US capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela; and a US economic blockade intended to oust the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. In every case, Russia has offered little visible help.
An American president pursuing foreign heads of state in their homes and offices, unchecked Congress, has also flipped the script on Putin, who has made his appetite for risk, willingness to use force and unpredictability central to his coercive power in the world.Story continues below this ad

“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,” 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 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.Story continues below this ad
“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,” Gabuev said.
But while Putin may be holding back now, he can play a longer game. 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 Putin to keep ties with them.
Russia has also seen that Trump’s second-term impulses in foreign affairs can cut both ways.
Trump has asserted US power in nations that Putin considers his own backyard, including hosting Central Asian leaders and brokering a peace pledge between Azerbaijan and Armenia. But in other cases Trump’s actions have benefited the Kremlin beyond its dreams.Story continues below this ad
Trump’s public Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year elated Moscow. So did Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which the Kremlin long viewed as an American tool for foreign meddling, and the US president’s attacks against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
And Trump’s threats this year to take Greenland from Denmark risked rupturing NATO from within, advancing Putin’s long-standing goal of destroying the Western military alliance.
Putin has been withholding any public criticism of 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, Trump once again took aim at Zelenskyy, not 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, Trump repeated what he had said to Zelenskyy a year ago in the Oval Office: “You don’t have the cards.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.