Putin is ready to abandon old allies to secure place in Trump’s new world order

The Russian leader is playing by the US President’s rules - and is willing to cast aside old friends in the process

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One year into his second term, Donald Trump has performed a full foreign policy about-turn, from staunch isolationist to committed interventionist.

In Moscow, this has caused a mixture of ecstasy and nervousness, depending on who the US President has in his sights. And Vladimir Putin is already showing a readiness to abandon old allies to secure his place in Trump’s new world order.

In recent weeks, Venezuela and Syria have been hit by US airstrikes. Cuba and Iran have been warned the US is considering military action towards them.

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Meanwhile, despite Trump’s climbdown in Davos over taking military action to secure Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, his repeated threats of full-scale invasion levelled at a Nato ally are unprecedented in the postwar era.

This new approach to direct intervention has rocked the Kremlin. Venezuela, Cuba and Iran are – or were, in Venezuela’s case – Russian allies who share Putin’s anti-West sentiment, while Syria was propped up by Russia until the Assad regime was overthrown in December 2024.

By striking or threatening with impunity those states whom Putin sees as his allies, Trump has exposed Russia’s relative weakness on the global stage.

The abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month startled Putin who, up until that point, didn’t believe Trump capable of enacting regime change by force. Putin’s lack of a response has been telling.

The near-casual ruthlessness with which Maduro was removed forced a reassessment in Russia of how Trump might approach other sticking points in his foreign policy agenda. Most pressingly, whether regime change or military threats might now be considered as a means of resolving the Ukraine war, should a peace deal not be struck.

Captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in New York after being extracted by US special forces (Photo: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)

While these concerns remain serious in the Kremlin, Trump’s growing appetite for militarism has been identified as an opening – and one that’s been blown wide open by Trump’s recent clashes with European Nato allies over Greenland.

By overtly threatening a Nato ally, Trump’s slow erosion of the rules-based international order almost became a full-on landslide. And even after the somewhat reconciliation in Davos, the fracture in Nato is only covered over, not healed. Putin has been handed a host of strategic advantages, for zero effort.

By making allies’ sovereignty a matter for negotiation, Russia’s longstanding argument that international law is conditional has just been validated by the US President. Coercive tactics have also become further entrenched, with the use of military and economic leverage a go-to tool for Trump – just as they are for Putin.

Meanwhile, transatlantic coordination has been weakened. European capitals are having to expend significant political capital on hedging against the US, rather than on aiding Ukraine or ramping up sanctions against Russia.

The Russian foreign ministry has portrayed Nato as in “deep crisis”, while Russian state media has mocked Europe but has been careful not to provoke Trump.

A damaged residential building in Kyiv following Russian strikes across Ukraine on 9 January this year (Photo: Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg via Getty)

Taken together, the blows Putin has suffered in Venezuela, Iran, Syria and Cuba, along with the unexpected boon in Greenland, leaves him with a strategic dilemma.

So far, Putin is responding with patience. Internally, he is making the case that Russia benefits most from a divided West, especially when it comes to getting a favourable deal in Ukraine. Externally, he has resisted acting impulsively or pushing back when Trump has lashed out at a Russian ally, as was the case with his muted response to Maduro’s abduction or the airstrikes on Syria.

Putin has also reportedly signed up to Trump’s proposed Board of Peace, which has caused traditional US allies like the UK to hesitate over joining. Instead, at its unveiling in Davos on Thursday, Trump sat alongside the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is seen as one of Putin’s closest friends in Europe.

Looking ahead, Western powers might expect to see increased Russian patrols or military exercises in the Arctic, using the Greenland debate as justification for heightened readiness. Any movement will likely be to signal capability, however, rather than a show of direct aggression towards the US. The Kremlin will want to probe, rather than provoke.

Putin increasingly believes that he and Trump have far more in common in their values and political outlooks than differences. Both are seemingly willing to abandon longstanding ties when it suits them. Greenland will also have encouraged Putin’s longstanding belief that they are natural partners in dismantling the rules-based international order.

Putin’s goal will now be to keep encouraging Trump along this path, without angering him over specific interventions. The prize – if he is successful – is Ukraine and the tacit approval of the US in Russia’s “spheres of influence” across parts of Europe and central Asia.

It’s a prize clearly worth abandoning traditional allies for.