Putin’s Two-Year Countdown Clock Starts Now - Newsweek

Donald Trump has lost Congress, and the Democrats who swept both chambers on Tuesday have every incentive to make his remaining two years in the Oval Office miserable.

Vladimir Putin won’t be losing any sleep over it. The Kremlin has never needed Congress to get Trump's attention; its dealings with Washington go via the president and a handful of his trusted advisers, and a Trump frustrated at home might be especially receptive to the promise of a grand diplomatic triumph abroad.

But whatever Moscow hopes to extract from the White House, it has just over two years to collect.

The Russian president’s clock now runs according to two timelines: Trump's diminishing political lifespan, and Moscow’s accumulating wartime costs. The Kremlin needs to finish its work before both expire.

Asked on Wednesday whether the Democrats' victory might complicate peace negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed the question aside.

"That's an internal matter in America," he replied, reminding reporters that Trump remained president and that preparations for another round of negotiations were already underway.

"President Donald Trump is continuing his term in office, and we sincerely hope that he will continue his peacekeeping efforts… the next round of trilateral talks will be held soon, Melania Trump's peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts have been successful. We hope that all this will continue," Peskov said.

A Democratic Congress can investigate the White House, restrict funding and legislate on sanctions. What it can’t do is prevent Trump’s administration from engaging directly with the Kremlin or dictate its negotiating positions.

Recent weeks have demonstrated just how productive that direct relationship can be for Moscow: on October 9, Trump struck a Russian diesel agreement and the Treasury temporarily relaxed sanctions to commence imports of the fuel. Less than two weeks later, Steve Witkoff met Putin in St. Petersburg, with Jared Kushner joining remotely, and agreed to trilateral peace talks. By October 28, Putin's adviser Yuri Ushakov had confirmed the Kremlin was in discussions with the White House about the prospect of removing sanctions from the Russian Direct Investment Fund, headed by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

While Americans headed to the polls on Tuesday, Ukrainian rescuers were still retrieving bodies from a Russian attack on a former school-turned-aid distribution site in the town of Komyshuvakha, where at least 42 people have now been confirmed dead.

So, Russia's military campaign has continued uninterrupted, its demands remain intact, and its relationship with Trump's negotiators is flourishing. Now Moscow wants to steer those negotiations down a favorable track.

Dmitriev enthusiastically praised Kushner and Witkoff as "peacemakers" in statements to Russian press yesterday. The flattery didn’t come out of nowhere; the president's son-in-law declared in a social media post on Wednesday that Washington is pursuing not just an end to the fighting in Ukraine, but a fundamental reshuffling of the European security architecture to prevent another war.

Moscow has been waiting years for that kind of explicit conversation.

In December 2021, Putin demanded that NATO abandon further enlargement, exclude Ukraine from membership and restrict its military deployments in Eastern Europe, effectively rolling back elements of the alliance's post-Cold War expansion. The proposals were rejected, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the past four-and-a-half years of bloodshed followed.

Yet Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko confirmed last month that Moscow's original demands remain, and the Kremlin is now seeking to negotiate the foundations of Europe's future security without formally involving much of Europe.

Putin's foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov last week ruled out European participation in the trilateral negotiations between Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. representatives, which will unfold on November 10-11 in Abu Dhabi, as Moscow requested. "They can get there if they buy tickets, but nobody is going to invite them to the negotiating table," he joked.

Moscow would much prefer Trump to endorse the broad principles of a settlement before European diplomats can officially weigh in. That could leave Washington's allies negotiating over an arrangement whose foundations were already laid without them, despite being expected to finance Ukraine's recovery and provide much of its postwar security.

But for this ploy to work, Trump still has to be in office.

The two-year expiry date on Trump’s presidency is only part of the Kremlin’s calculations; Russia’s deteriorating finances, mounting military losses and the growing cost of keeping the war going are another.

John Lough, a senior research fellow at the NEST Centre, believes Putin thinks he is winning and can use Trump to secure victory on favorable terms. But he also sees considerable danger in allowing the fighting to drag on.

"I think he would rather get out of this as quickly as he can," Lough told Newsweek. "Yes, economically, they can go on, but we're going to see a steady deterioration. There's a yawning budget deficit already this year," he continued, pointing to cuts in nonmilitary spending and the escalating cost of recruiting soldiers. "I think it's a bit of a ticking time bomb now."

Alexander Morozov, a fellow Russia specialist at the NEST Centre, is less convinced that Putin is preparing to end the war anytime soon. "Nobody in the Russian leadership, as far as we can see, expects the war to end in the next two years," he told Newsweek, pointing to Russia's estimated budgets for 2027–28 and continued investment in military production.

"Putin will continue the game Trump has already been drawn into: restoring economic relations without moving toward a ceasefire," Morozov argued. Moscow, he said, benefits from the atmosphere of cooperation itself, which allows it to flatter Trump while portraying European governments as obstacles to peace.

But Lough believes Russia's fiscal preparation for a prolonged war is driven by necessity, rather than desire.

"For now I don't see over the next six months why they can't keep going as they are," he said. But another six months of deteriorating finances, combined with further problems at home, could mean "more questions asked about why Putin can't finish off the Ukrainians."