Donald Trump is souring on Vladimir Putin as the Russian president's grip on power weakens and his war in Ukraine drags into an embarrassing stalemate, according to a new analysis.
The shift comes as Trump prepares for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, a meeting that has left Putin nervously watching from the sidelines, Sarah Baxter wrote for The i Paper.
Trump, who "loves dictators" and "has cosied up to Putin for years," is now confronting the uncomfortable reality that his longtime ally leads "a declining nation that has lost much of its superpower glow," Baxter wrote Saturday.
The central problem for Putin is simple, she wrote. Trump can't stand losers.
"He hates to be associated with losers," Baxter wrote — and Russia's performance in Ukraine is making that association harder to avoid by the day. The war has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union's entire campaign against Nazi Germany in World War II, at a cost of more than a million casualties.
Trump offered a telling signal of the shift in a recent televised interview with the pro-MAGA Salem News Channel, delivering what Baxter described as "a surprisingly friendly olive branch" to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"I like Zelensky, I've always gotten along with him, other than the one moment in the White House, when I thought he was a little aggressive on his behalf," Trump said.
That "one moment" was the February 2025 Oval Office ambush, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly berated Zelensky. His message that day — that Putin would "flatter and string them along but was not serious about peace" — has since proven resounding.
"Given the difficulty Trump has had settling the Ukraine war on 'day one,' this truth is now self-evident," Baxter wrote.
Making matters worse for Putin, a leaked European intelligence report — covered by CNN and denied by Russia — claimed the Russian president has spent weeks hiding in a "palatial bunker" fearing assassination or a coup, while Zelensky has been photographed visiting troops on the front lines.
Trump also absorbed a political blow when his MAGA ally Viktor Orbán was routed in last month's Hungarian elections, a defeat that Baxter says signals Putin's "axis of influence is shrinking" — and one that dealt a quiet blow to Vance, who had invested heavily in Orbán's success.
Meanwhile, Trump is eager to project strength heading into Beijing. His push to resolve the Iran conflict before the summit — the meeting was initially postponed after war broke out, given China's alliance with Tehran — underscores how much the president wants a clean win with Xi, Baxter wrote.
Far from the often-theorized strategy of using Russia to isolate China, Baxter argues the dynamic has flipped. Putin now has reason to fear the two superpowers cutting deals that leave him behind entirely.
"There is no far-sighted master chess strategy at work," Baxter wrote, dismissing theories that Trump has been playing geopolitical chess. "The most consistent guide to Trump's outlook on the world is that he loves dictators, has cosied up to Putin for years and has never been seriously hostile to China."
