By refusing a ceasefire and underestimating his counterpart, the Russian leader has walked into a new American strategy of quiet, crippling pressure that is devastating his war machine.
There is little doubt that Vladimir Putin’s strategy has been to string Donald Trump along - AFP
When the postponement of Donald Trump’s much-anticipated Budapest summit with Vladimir Putin was announced, it seemed to confirm all his critics’ worst fears. At the White House on Tuesday, the president was blunt, explaining he did not want a “wasted meeting” and indicating that Russia was still unwilling to freeze hostilities in Ukraine along the current front lines.
The immediate reaction was ferocious. Pundits and political opponents declared that Putin was simply "stringing Trump along" to buy time. The summit's collapse, in this reading, was a predictable embarrassment. Trump, they argued, was being "played" too willing to believe a breakthrough was possible and too naive to see that the Kremlin would never agree to a compromise.
Just a few days later, this analysis appears entirely unfounded.
While it is perhaps true that Trump has been too willing to believe Putin, it is now clear that behind the scenes of his diplomatic overtures, a far more ruthless strategy is unfolding. The US is not only imposing significant new sanctions on Russia's largest oil companies but is also inflicting real, systemic damage on the Russian war machine.
The failed summit was not a sign of Trump being played. It was a sign that Putin has badly miscalculated, and he is now discovering the cost of his intransigence.
The Tomahawk Gambit
One of the clearest signs of this new, hard-nosed approach was the debate over sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. The previous Biden administration tied itself in knots over allowing Kyiv to strike inside Russia with long-range missiles, clearly fearful of Moscow’s escalatory threats. For years, Washington appeared to be dancing to the Kremlin's tune, having to be dragged into providing more serious weapons.
President Trump has changed that calculus.
He has openly stated that he is considering providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. With a staggering 2,500km strike radius, these weapons could theoretically enable a Ukrainian strike on Moscow itself.
While Trump appeared to cool on the idea after his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky last week, the very fact that Tomahawks were put on the table has fundamentally altered the psychological dynamic of the war. Washington has signalled that it is no longer afraid of the Kremlin’s red lines. Putin is left guessing. The Russian president can choose to waste Washington’s time, as he is doing, but he can no longer be certain that this won't result in Ukraine being handed missiles that could hit the Kremlin.
Unleashing the Drones
Trump is complicating matters for the Russian military in other, more immediate ways. While the Biden administration privately chided Ukraine for its strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, the current White House has placed no such pressure on Kyiv.
This "policy flexibility" has allowed Ukraine to asymmetrically retaliate against Russia’s daily aggression. And this is not just a passive approval. Since the August 2025 Alaska summit, the US has begun giving Ukraine additional intelligence support to strike Russian energy infrastructure—with spectacular results.
This weekend, for example, Ukraine launched two devastating drone attacks on energy infrastructure deep inside Russia, in the Orenburg and Samara regions.
The first strike wreaked havoc on one of the largest gas processing plants in the world, causing severe disruptions in Russia’s gas intake from Kazakhstan. The second attacked Rosneft’s Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, damaging its main refining units which process millions of tons of oil per year.
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| Ukraine strikes a chemical plant in Bryansk |
Bleeding the War Machine Dry
Russia is unlikely to be able to absorb the cumulative impact of such strikes forever. The economic bleeding has already begun.
Historically, antiquated equipment keeps around 22% of Russia’s oil refining capacity inactive. Today, Ukrainian drone strikes enabled by this new US policy are thought to have increased that inactive share to 38%.
This is estimated to be costing the Russian state tens of millions of dollars every single day. To add insult to injury, the domestic squeeze is so tight that Russia has been forced to slash its diesel exports as energy prices rise at home.
For now, the Kremlin has shrugged off Trump’s pressure tactics with its usual bravado. The head of the Duma defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov, warned that if Tomahawks are sent, Russia would target the launchers and "any US military specialists" helping to operate them. The hawkish Dmitry Medvedev issued his own dark warnings. And after the Budapest summit collapsed, Putin personally oversaw a massive readiness test of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.
While the Kremlin might seem unfazed, the situation has clearly changed. Behind the headlines of diplomatic failures, Russia is now under real pressure. Putin may not currently see Trump’s ceasefire proposal as advantageous, but as his refineries burn and his treasury empties, he could soon come to regret his terrible mistake.