More than a decade before Russia’s armed forces crossed the borders in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood in front of world leaders and delivered a long, cold speech, demanding a radical reform of the world order.

“We have arrived at that decisive moment when we have to think seriously about the architecture of global security,” Putin said in his 2007 speech in Munich, accusing NATO of violating his promise with his expansion to Eastern Europe and demanding the end of the US.

Tensions between Moscow and West increased in the coming years. Russia sent its army to Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused a wide West effort to isolate Moscow and led new countries to join NATO.

In her analysis or Wall Street Journal He says Putin insisted while his army was confronted with losses on the battlefield and his economy was pressured by western sanctions. Bet on the long -term game. Now, this perseverance seems to be performing as people are shifting decisively in its direction. The US has suspended military aid to Ukraine and is calling for ending the isolation of Moscow. They are removed from traditional allies in Europe.

“We all see how fast people change,” Putin told his security services after the US-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia. Moscow and Washington, he said, are now ready to face “strategic problems in the world’s architecture.”

Even Putin’s most intransigent advisers have been surprised by the speed at which the White House tone has changed in recent weeks.

“The new government is rapidly changing all its foreign policy facets,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week, referring to US President Donald Trump’s team.

Trump, calling on both sides to end the war, turned his fire to Ukraine in recent days. He called Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski dictator and accused him of the start of the war, repeating comments of Russian officials. The change in his attitude culminated with the public controversy on Friday at the White House between the Ukrainian leader and Trump.

The Russian state media covered the controversy in the Oval Office. On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump’s “common rational approach” and accused European leaders of prolonging war.

In his own speech in Munich last month, 18 years after Putin’s war rhetoric, Vice President Jay Di Vance said that the erosion of democracy in Europe is a greater threat to Epirus than Russia or China, repeating a frequent claim.

“We haven’t seen this before,” said Sergei Radsenko, Russia’s historian and author of a new book on Moscow’s strategy in the Cold War. “Not only the political rearrangement, but also the convergence of values.”

For Putin, the current moment is a justification for the patient strategy that has perfected during a quarter of the century in power.

The former KGB agent, who rose from obscurity to lead Russia at the turn of the century, has been against the US -led world order for years and was formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which Putin has described as “the greatest geopolis”.

Putin’s views in Munich came from dissatisfaction with the US that intensified in 2004, according to Thomas Graham, a former White House adviser to Russia in former President George Bush’s government. That year, a West -backed revolution shocked Ukraine and Chechen separatists occupied a school in the northern Caucasus of Russia. Putin accused the US of encouraging the autonomous movement.

“These two events led Putin to believe that the United States was not really interested in a cooperation with Russia, that the fight against terrorism and the promotion of democracy were merely tobacco preparations for the geopolitical expansion of America to the former Soviet area.” “He then concluded that the real goal of the United States was to erode Russia as great power.”

Putin’s 2007 speech made it clear for the first time the depth of his rage over the “arrogance of the US”. Many Western officials appeared to reject Putin’s warning at that time. “A cold war was enough,” US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied.

The following year, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied two pro -Russian pockets in the former Soviet Republic, without a substantial reaction from the West. Former President Barack Obama’s government sought to “restart” relations with Moscow under Russian transitional president Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 was accompanied by the suppression of the disagreeing and growing.

Relations worsened when Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and sent his army to eastern Ukraine. In response to the full -scale Russian invasion in 2022, former President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on Moscow and promised to support Ukraine “for as long as it needed”.

After Trump’s victory in the November elections, Putin tried to throw the tones. He reiterated false allegations of the 2020 elections and praised Trump’s reaction to his assassination attempt in July.

Now, with Trump restoring relations with Moscow and inhibiting vital military aid to Kiev, Putin sees an opportunity to radically change Russia’s position in the world, analysts say.

What it seeks is much more than a mere agreement to end the battles. Putin’s goal is to turn Ukraine into a weakened state, permanently vulnerable to Russian military aggression, and to prevent it from re -arranging with Western support. Its ambition is to remove NATO completely from Eastern Europe.

Historian Sergei Radsenko speaks of historical parallels with the post -World War II period, when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sought agreement with the US to divide Europe into spheres of influence. The US, on the other hand, remained active in Epirus, ensuring security and limiting Stalin’s ambitions.

Today, says Ranchenko, the Kremlin is promoting a similar vision. “What I find remarkable is that the Trump government also seems to adopt this vision for the world,” he said.

Of course, today’s world is very different from the post -war order of things. After 1945, Europe was exhausted, ravaged by the war, and Stalin took advantage of the opportunity to create a sphere of influence against it. Today, Epirus is divided by disagreements but remains united in a single geopolitical bloc. On Sunday, European leaders met in London to discuss ways to continue supporting Kiev.

Putin plays a risky game by insisting on this maximalist position, analysts say. Trump, who wishes to quickly close a peace agreement with Kiev and Moscow, can seek to push Russia if the negotiations are pulling. Shortly after taking up his duties, he warned that Russia could face sanctions and duties if it did not reach an agreement.

Russia has stated that it will continue to wage the war in Ukraine until a result of it has come about. It has released the need to resolve the “main causes” of war, which, according to Russian narrative, include Ukraine’s pro -Western orientation and NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

Defense experts say that Russia has the resources to continue the war in Ukraine for at least another year, conquering Ukrainian territories that will almost certainly maintain as soon as an agreement is reached.

Putin will not rush to close the agreement that Trump will seek, because he has passed decades demanding the global rearrangement he believes he can eventually take place.

“His original idea in Ukraine, that he has to do what he wants and the West will have no choice but to retreat was the right idea,” said Boris Bodarev, a former Russian diplomat who resigned because of the war and now lives in Europe. “Now he says: Make us a proposal we cannot deny. We will wait. “