It has been Vladimir Putin’s best week since he launched his invasion of Ukraine.
He returns from Beijing with full-throated support from his Chinese patron and North Korean ally and with his enemies in the West in disarray.
He is now sticking the knife in, issuing ominous warnings to stymie robust security guarantees for Ukraine, knowing Washington and Europe are divided.
Putin threatens to strike foreign troops in Ukraine – war latest
His latest intervention on the issue of foreign troops in Ukraine shows how masterfully he has hijacked diplomacy.
Analysts now agree, he seems to have hoodwinked Donald Trump and his team in Alaska on the whole question of security guarantees.
Mr Trump’s officials returned claiming the Russian leader had made a major concession, agreeing to Nato ‘Article 5 style’ guarantees for a post-war Ukraine.
He hadn’t. In reality, he revived an idea going back to Ukrainian-Russian talks in 2022 that would give Moscow a veto over any such guarantees.
The so-called Istanbul framework would allow Russia to block efforts to protect Ukraine from another Russian invasion. Unsurprisingly, Kyiv rejected the idea then and still does so now.
Mr Trump, however, a man famously impatient with details, appears to have been deceived into thinking the proposal was worth exploring. Observers say the US president is still being strung along and played by the Kremlin.
Mr Putin, however, has now managed to shift the conversation. He has spiked European efforts at the White House summit to draw America into supporting guarantees against Russia ever attacking Ukraine again.
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The discussion is again about how the fox can help rebuild the hen house before coming back for more chickens.
Thanks to Presidents Trump and Xi, Mr Putin is no longer a global pariah, strutting the world stage on both American and now Chinese soil.
And Mr Trump’s Ukraine policy remains stuck in a cycle. Pursue diplomacy, express impatience with Russia’s latest attacks, give Putin another two weeks, and agree to speak to him again. Rinse and repeat.
The assumption is that the Russian leader has some sort of hold over him.
Meanwhile, the war goes on, Russia gathers more support, and its military raises its game.
Europe, a continent with 12 times the economic might of Russia, remains apparently caught in the headlights, unable to replace American leadership.
And to rub salt into Ukrainian wounds, European nations continue buying more than €20bn of Russian energy a year to help Moscow fund its invasion.
With enemies like that, no wonder Mr Putin is smiling.
