Russia President Vladimir Putin sent a guarded message of congratulations to Donald Trump on inauguration day, but then held a long direct call with his “dear friend,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

From Putin’s perspective, this makes sense. Russia gets billions of dollars from energy sales to China and technology from Beijing, but from Washington, until recently, mostly sanctions and suspicion.

Moscow is hoping for a more positive relationship with the current White House occupant, who has made his desire for a “deal” to end the Ukraine war well known.

But talk of exit scenarios from this 3-year-old conflict should not mask the fact that since the invasion began, Putin has overseen one of the worst periods in Russian foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

The war in Ukraine has foreclosed on options and blunted Russian action around the world.

Unlike the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 2022 invasion produced an unprecedented level of transatlantic unity, including the expansion of NATO and sanctions on Russian trade and finance. In the past year, both the U.S. and the European Union expanded their sanction packages.

And for the first time, the EU banned the re-export of Russian liquefied natural gas and ended support for a Russian LNG project in the Arctic.

EU-Russian trade, including European imports of energy, has dropped to a fraction of what it was before the war.

The two Nordstrom pipelines, designed to bring Russian gas to Germany without transiting East Europe, lie crippled and unused. Revenues from energy sales are roughly one-half of what they were two years ago.

At the same time, the West has sent billions in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, enabling a level of resilience for which Russia was unprepared. Meanwhile, global companies and technical experts and intellectuals have fled Russia in droves.

While Russia has evaded some restrictions with its “shadow fleet” – an aging group of tankers sailing under various administrative and technical evasions – the country’s main savior is now China. Trade between China........

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