Trump has been friendly to Putin—but not useful to him. Moscow entered 2026 under more U.S. sanctions than before Trump’s reelection, with a much-worse economy, and is unable to agree to any of the peace proposals on the table. The Kremlin is all smiles whenever Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is in town, and Putin still calls Trump ahead of the U.S. president’s meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky, but Oreshnik is the Kremlin’s statement piece. The missile’s launch means that Russia’s hopes for an agreeable Trump have more or less vanished—especially after U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3.

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The expectation in Moscow was that America would be withdrawing from the world, but just in the past few weeks, Washington has bombed Nigeria, Syria, and Venezuela, and issued threats to bomb Iran (again), should the Islamic Republic open fire on protesters, which it has done. The Kremlin tried to shield an oil tanker that the United States was determined to seize—allowing it to fly the Russian flag, issuing diplomatic warnings, and even shadowing it with Russian military vessels, reportedly including a submarine. The U.S. Coast Guard took the ship anyway and then seized a second tanker near Venezuela.

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As evidenced by new sanctions on Russian oil, the seizure of Russian tankers, and the continuing flow of American weapons to Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly overplayed his hand with the president of the United States. What’s worse for Putin—and possibly for the world—is that this Trump is on the warpath. Most of his recent press conferences have included references to bombing or regime-changing one country or another (the list now includes a NATO country, too). This is not the real-estate or cryptocurrency Trump. This is Trump with guns—a leader whose doctrine boils down to “ICE for Americans. Delta Force for everyone else.”