Throughout the first months of 2026, in a situation where Trump is entering (or plans to enter) various imagined zones of Putin's interests without wiping his feet — Venezuela, Iran, Cuba — observers are asking: why is Putin silent, why doesn't he respond to the United States?
To perform these functions — using the language of the Soviet press of the late 1940s or the dialect of today's social networks — there are officials like M. V. Zakharova, S. V. Lavrov, and D. A. Medvedev. It's not a royal matter, firstly. Secondly, Putin needs Trump, very much so — as the only intermediary in what is conditionally called "negotiations" with Ukraine. More precisely, a partner in prolonging the "negotiations."
The "Putin Doctrine — 2025," which smoothly transitioned into 2026, involves continuing hostilities without Washington's shouts and building work with Trump's team in such a way that it creates the impression of intransigence primarily on the Ukrainian, not the Russian side.
In the popular language so loved by Putin, this is called a "scam." Another matter, it's Trump's business — to pretend that he takes his Russian counterpart's game seriously or to respond to him indirectly from time to time, as in the summer story with tariff increases for India: Putin is to blame, but Modi will answer for him. Finally, there's a third factor why Putin needs Trump: it's necessary to strike while the iron is hot, while this most specific president in the new and modern history of the United States is in power.
Putin's regime needs money — the oil and gas rent is working poorly, especially under sanctions. Without rent, the semi-totalitarian-semi-authoritarian model cannot exist, especially in a situation where it's necessary to simultaneously feed the military-industrial complex with insane money and buy the loyalty of the population under double-digit inflation expectations.
The rent was oil and gas. Now the rent is the tightening of tax policy, with the subjects (from the word "submit") of the Russian Federation acting as oil. But this is a weak rent because according to the Laffer curve, with excessive tax burden, revenues do not increase but decrease, and market agents begin to sell goods mainly for cash and generally go underground. (Taxes can be collected when economic (not to be confused with budgetary pumping of unproductive sectors like the military-industrial complex) and investment activity is growing, but it is falling.) Therefore, agreements with the USA regarding various deals, whether in the Arctic or rare earth metals, are needed. It's expensive, but businesses close to Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, can be spun up. On the Russian side, the "usual suspects" — Kremlin-affiliated super-large businesses — will "attach" themselves. Something will trickle down to the budget, that is, to the layers of the population associated with the Special Military Operation and the military-industrial complex. And it will also be possible to complete the high-speed railway Moscow — St. Petersburg and the elite yacht complex in the same St. Petersburg, which practically no one will use, but who cares.
Trump persistently plays along with Putin even in a situation where Russian intelligence assistance to the Iranians is obvious. The American president is frank — well, he helps, yes, and so what. I, meaning Trump, do not ask him, meaning Putin, for permission to kidnap Maduro, strike Iran, and threaten Cuba.
The two leaders of the new type are even. Almost a balance of the early 1970s, when Vietnam or the Yom Kippur War strained relations between superpowers but did not spoil them. However, there is a fundamental difference: Trump and Putin are not Nixon and Brezhnev, who genuinely wanted peace, détente, and a balance of power, Rubio is not Kissinger, Lavrov is not Gromyko. And, excuse the expression, the Russian ambassador to Washington Darchiev is not the USSR ambassador to the USA Dobrynin. Moreover, the Middle East conflict of 1973 was resolved faster than the current escalating confrontations, and the Vietnam War was ended, and détente with today's clumsy compliments along the Putin-Trump line is decidedly incomparable.
V. Putin and D. Trump. Meeting in Alaska, August 2025. Sergey Bobylev / POOL / TASS
Putin may be a weak strategist — he started his Special Military Operation without long-term (or even medium-term) goal-setting, goals and objectives have not become clearer in four years, but he knows how to accept tactical gifts, especially from Trump. The former owner of the "Miss Universe" beauty pageant, a figure in the Epstein files, and the 47th president of the USA not only allows Putin to continue hostilities, but he also distracts attention from the Ukrainian conflict with his jabs towards Greenland, Venezuela, and Iran. Putin does not interfere with Trump destroying the world order — it is in his interests. After all, the source of the epidemic of the destruction of humanitarian principles of the second half of the 20th century and the "rules" contained in the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms was February 24, 2022, and Trump, along with other colleagues like Xi, is merely continuing to adhere to the new general line. What the US president does becomes a kind of fuel for Moscow's whataboutism — look, everyone is doing it, the States cannot forbid us from picking our noses. Look, not only are we stuck in the conflict: Trump, the almighty, is also getting bogged down before our eyes.
But there is also another gift, though the validity period of the gift card may be limited. About which Putin spoke without any embarrassment — the time of new sincerity has come — at an urgently convened meeting on March 9, as stated in the Kremlin press service release, "on the situation in the global oil and gas market."
"Meeting on"! The very title is delightful. Trump blew up the price situation, and the Kremlin is rubbing its hands. But, Putin frankly says, we must seize the moment — while the prices for the old outgoing type of raw materials are high, we need to urgently sell, sell, sell! And remind everyone how "reliable suppliers" we are, which comrades from Hungary and Slovakia understand well. Strategy is nothing (Putin never believed in the energy transition and never will — this is a long-term and worsening problem for Russia), tactics are everything: "...it is important for Russian energy companies to use the current moment, including to direct additional export revenue to reduce their debt burden, debts to domestic banks." Evasive verbal acrobatics, behind which lies a simple thesis — while there is an opportunity, while Trump is fooling around, we need to pump up the military budget with additional free income.
What help to Iran, non-fulfillment of strategic partnership obligations (which practically no one and never, not only Putin's Russia, properly fulfills) — here comes the oil spawning season, we must seize the moment, while puffing out our cheeks and pontificating through the mouths of secondary officials about the Americans violating international law. International law? And what is that? No more than Roman law during the times of barbarians, vandals, and the collapse of the Roman Empire, that is, the then world order...
So Trump and Putin will continue to stubbornly tolerate each other. For Trump, Putin is not an ayatollah or a Latin American leader, but a serious player, the heir of a superpower — with him, you can play a proxy war and work on "stopping eight wars," while continuing and stimulating new conflicts.
However, to spin Trump for "money," political tourism by Witkoff — Kushner — Dmitriev is not enough. A peace agreement on Ukraine is needed. But they will talk about it later. After it becomes clear how deeply Trump is bogged down in the Iranian quagmire. Another small victorious war... A small victorious World War III...
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a "foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.