Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

President Trump’s efforts to court President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are rife with contradictions about stability and displays of American power.

President Trump meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin in Alaska last August. Mr. Trump’s focus on strength has magnified tensions with Russia in regions like Latin America, where Mr. Putin has sought to extend his influence Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Jan. 8, 2026, 12:00 a.m. ET

The Trump administration declared in December that it sought “strategic stability with Russia.”

That goal has run headlong into an even higher Trump priority: displaying American power.

On Wednesday, the United States took one of its most provocative actions against Moscow since President Trump returned to the White House, seizing a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic in a military operation that involved a Navy P-8 submarine-hunting aircraft and powerful AC-130 gunships.

U.S. officials said the operation was about enforcing the blockade of Venezuelan oil exports and described the tanker, which had been fleeing U.S. authorities for more than two weeks, as “stateless.” But to Russia, which had formally asked the United States to stop its pursuit of the vessel, the move represented the latest affront from a president who has not shied from crimping Russian interests when it has suited him.

“This is 21st-century piracy,” Leonid Slutsky, a senior Russian lawmaker, told the state-run Tass news agency.

The episode showed how Mr. Trump’s efforts to court President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while also asserting American global dominance are rife with contradictions and pose risks for both sides.

On the one hand, Mr. Trump’s embrace of using force to advance what he sees as national interests meshes with Mr. Putin’s conception of a world order dominated and divided by great powers. But Mr. Trump’s focus on strength has also magnified tensions with Russia in regions like Latin America, where Mr. Putin has sought to extend his influence — and has underscored Russia’s global weaknesses as it remains bogged down in Ukraine.

“How many problems does Trump solve for Putin? To me, it’s very few,” said Michael Kimmage, the director of the Kennan Institute in Washington, a center for research on the former Soviet Union. “It seems like he creates many more problems than he solves.”

Despite his extensive talks with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump so far has not forced Ukraine to capitulate to a Russian victory, and he has continued to share valuable American intelligence with Kyiv. In Europe, Mr. Kimmage argued, Mr. Trump’s discord with Western leaders may be satisfying for the Kremlin to watch — but Europe’s increased investment in its own defense as a result is a less pleasant development for Moscow.

In Venezuela, a longtime Kremlin ally, Mr. Trump’s attack on Saturday validated Mr. Putin’s spheres-of-interest worldview but also highlighted Russia’s inability to aid its partners. The capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, was the latest blow against a ruler close to Moscow, coming in the wake of the U.S. airstrikes on Iran last summer and, before Mr. Trump returned to the presidency, the fall of the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

“Seems those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work so well, did they?” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a speech at the Newport News Naval Shipyard in Virginia on Monday, referring to the Russian weaponry in Venezuela’s arsenal.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump’s personal relationships with Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China “are going to continue” despite any tensions over Venezuela. But in a social media post on Wednesday that criticized Norway for his lack of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Trump made it clear that he saw his relationships with those leaders through the lens of military power.

“The only Nation that China and Russia fear and respect is the DJT REBUILT U.S.A.,” Mr. Trump wrote, using his initials.

For most of his second term, Mr. Trump has sought accommodation with Mr. Putin, even as the Russian leader rebuffed U.S. efforts to forge a compromise to stop the fighting in Ukraine. In December, the White House codified that approach in its update to its main foreign policy document, the National Security Strategy, which described ending the war in Ukraine and achieving “strategic stability with Russia” as a top priority.

The White House has sought to portray the United States as a neutral party in the Ukraine talks, even though some American support is still flowing to Ukraine. In Paris on Tuesday, a gathering of European leaders with American and Ukrainian officials failed to produce clarity on the extent of American involvement in a proposed military force to deter another possible Russian invasion after the current war ends.

“We are here to mediate and help in the peace process, and we are prepared to do anything necessary to get to that place,” Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, said after the meeting.

In the Western Hemisphere, the U.S. approach to Russia has been more confrontational. American officials have described Russia as one of the U.S. adversaries that has used its partnership with Venezuela to expand its influence across Latin America — a dynamic that the U.S. seizure of Mr. Maduro is supposed to stop.

The United States is pressuring the interim Venezuelan government to expel spies and military personnel from China, Russia, Cuba and Iran, The New York Times reported. And in enforcing its naval blockade on Venezuelan energy exports, the United States is challenging the system of “shadow fleet” ships that Russia and other sanctioned countries have relied upon to sell their oil.

On Wednesday, the U.S. military took extraordinary measures to seize an oil tanker that had eluded American authorities after being stopped in the Caribbean on its way to pick up oil in Venezuela. In a last-ditch effort to avoid seizure, the ship, formerly known as the Bella 1, began flying a Russian flag. Russia dispatched at least one naval vessel to meet and escort the ship and made a formal diplomatic request asking the United States to stop its pursuit.

But those measures failed to deter the United States, which dispatched warplanes from bases in Britain in the operation to board the ship. Ms. Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the crew could be brought to the United States for prosecution.

Russia protested that the seizure violated international law and demanded that the Russian nationals on board be released as soon as possible. But the Russian government did not threaten consequences, and Mr. Putin and Russia’s military did not immediately comment on the seizure of the ship.

It was a sign that Moscow was trying to keep tensions in check, as it has in the wake of Mr. Trump’s criticisms of Mr. Putin over the last year or after other U.S. actions that challenged Russia’s global influence, like the strikes against Iran. In doing so, Russia has sought to keep the door open for a favorable deal on Ukraine with Mr. Trump. But it has also revealed the limits of its own power.

“Russia is not the kind of country that can purely rely on coercive force,” Mr. Kimmage, the Kennan Institute director, said. “That’s the contradiction of Putin, and, ironically, Trump is perhaps helping to reveal that contradiction.”

Anton Troianovski writes about American foreign policy and national security for The Times from Washington. He was previously a foreign correspondent based in Moscow and Berlin.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT