Trump’s war of choice presents an opportunity to Putin | CNN

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows how to find opportunity in crisis, and the metastasizing Iran war is the latest case in point. Putin began the year projecting confidence about his campaign to subjugate Ukraine, despite incremental progress on the battlefield. But in early January, the Trump administration dealt a blow to Russia’s prestige with the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a strategic partner of Moscow, in a daring commando raid. And when the new war erupted in the Gulf region, Putin initially looked to be a loser: US-Israeli decapitation strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, another longtime ally of Russia, and decimated Iranian military targets. The strategic partnership Moscow inked with Iran last year appeared to be a mere scrap of paper. Khamenei, it’s worth remembering, was only the latest friend of the Kremlin to fall: In early December 2024, just over a year before the toppling of Maduro, the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a longtime client of Moscow, came crashing down. But despite the geopolitical optics, Putin appears to be keeping eyes on his main prize: dismantling an independent Ukraine. On Monday,