On May 20, six days after hosting the American president, President Xi Jinping of China welcomed another world leader in Beijing, and spoke about their “mutual trust and strategic coordination with a resilience that remains unyielding.” Xi’s visitor was President Vladimir Putin of Russia. China and Russia signed 20 agreements on technology and trade. As the war against Iran disrupted oil and gas supplies, Moscow and Beijing had discussions about boosting Russian oil exports to China, which imports around 70% of its crude oil. The visit offered Putin the opportunity to emphasize the shared Russian and Chinese antipathy to American dominance and position Russia, alongside China, as a stabilizing global force despite the war in Ukraine. Xi offered a measured critique of the American war against Iran, urged a “complete cessation of hostilities” and described a renewal of airstrikes by the United States as “unacceptable.” Xi and Putin also signed a declaration enshrining their shared vision of a multipolar world order. Putin has championed the idea since a pointed speech in Munich in 2007, in which he ridiculed Western-led institutions with barely concealed contempt and accused the United States of fanning conflicts across the world through the unilateral use of force. Putin’s record since then tells its own story. He attacked Georgia in 2008, seized roughly 15% of Ukraine in 2014, and just last week pushed through legislation authorizing the invasion of any country to “protect Russian citizens.” The day before Putin flew to Beijing, Belarus announced the beginning of military training exercises involving Russian nuclear weapons, a timely reminder of how dangerously conflict could spread.Russia’s winter of discontentYet just a few months earlier, the Russian president’s fortunes were rather grim. By January, the Russian economy was hanging by a thread. To cope with mounting economic difficulties, Putin instructed the government to raise taxes. In February, economists predicted that the budget deficit would triple by the end of the year. For the first time, Russian businesses began to feel the sting of a Value-Added Tax increase from 20% to 22%. Up to 75% of all small and medium-sized businesses reported a lack of funds for development. Basic food items grew more expensive: the price for beer jumped by 10%, and that of sparkling wine by 28%. Russian government agencies and state companies moved toward massive layoffs. By late February, the European Union was planning to propose a permanent ban on Russian oil within a few months. Putin has struggled to manage fighting Kyiv on the one hand and placating domestic constituencies on the other. Rumors and speculation about internal strife within the Kremlin were widespread. Russia enforced an unpopular internet crackdown and a popular expression of discontent and dissent led by online influencers exploded, which refuses to die down. Economic distress has a way of compounding political troubles. Putin got lucky. On Feb. 28, President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel launched their war against Iran. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and the price of Russia’s crude oil shot up from $44 to $100 per barrel. The rising oil prices after the war in Iran were a major boost for Putin, who has watched the Russian war machine bleed billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of men since his invasion of Ukraine. Yet as he has done repeatedly throughout his 26-year tenure, Putin seems to have found a way out again—aided by the economic fallout of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, and by his uncanny ability to consistently escape consequences at home and abroad. How the Iran war helped PutinThe closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sparked new demand for Putin’s oil. Europe, long troubled by the war in Ukraine, felt a renewed desire for Russian oil, mirroring the rising thirst for energy security across Asia. By lifting sanctions on Russian oil already loaded onto tankers at sea, Trump handed Putin another win—freeing him to sell more widely and draw new buyers. China and India now compete for Russian oil. Even Japan has declared Russian oil as “extremely important” to its energy security, so long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Trump also offered Putin a gift far greater than oil riches. The tariff wars, the removal of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, the assassination of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the threat of acquiring Greenland by force, and weakening NATO, have collectively undermined the international rules-based order dominated by America and Europe. Putin had been dreaming of exactly this for two decades. A weakened international order, combined with a surfeit of oil riches, helps Putin weather economic difficulties and emboldens him to keep pounding the drums of the war in Ukraine. Speaking at a forum on Apr. 21, Putin declared that the entire country would work for the war front. “In the hardest, freezing months of World War II in 1941 and 1942, children, grandmothers and women knitted socks, just like now,” he said. “The success of our victories is in unity—the same thing will happen now.” Despite Putin’s rallying cries, assessments by military analysts suggest that the situation on the battlefield is essentially a stalemate, with Ukraine having reclaimed at least as much territory as it has lost in recent weeks.Putin’s fortress strategy A world of raw power politics suits Putin. In my 25 years of reporting on Russia, I have witnessed only one period of anything resembling a political thaw: beginning in 2008, when a return to policies of integration with Europe’s rules-based order briefly appeared to be back on the table. Back then, Kremlin insiders told me that Russia needed to “get off the oil needle” and modernize. Yet by 2012, Putin had steered the country back toward self-isolation and militarism. During the domestic crackdown that started that year, the Kremlin shut popular news outlets, banned opposition groups, and imprisoned hundreds of talented young Russians. Abroad, Putin focused on forming a moat of buffer countries, a gray zone between the East and the West. In 2020, a Kremlin official described it to me as Putin’s “fortress” strategy. But this strategy cannot last forever, given the damage it inflicts on the economy. Over four years of the war in Ukraine, Russian authorities have jailed 1,603 political prisoners, according to Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian human rights organization. Meanwhile, hard-to-police social media platforms have been flooded with Russians’ complaints. In April alone, even the government-linked VTsIOM polling agency published surveys showing that only 29% of Russians named Putin as a leader they would trust to run the country. The Kremlin’s approval rating is cracking. “You are lied to,” the blogger Viktoria Bonya, previously known online for promoting cosmetic procedures and plastic surgeries, told Putin bluntly in a video posted online, speaking about the sycophants who surround him. “They are scared of you.” More than 30 million Russian speakers watched her video in a single week. Separately, the Russian celebrity Ksenia Sobchak—often described as the Paris Hilton of Russia—hosted Ilya Remeslo, a famous blogger who had been a supporter of the Kremlin but has since turned against Putin, on her popular YouTube show. They had a discussion about comments Remeslo had made about Putin, describing him as an “illegitimate president,” and the cause of “all of Russia’s problems.” Their conversation even touched upon Remeslo’s remarks about the possibility of “a palace coup” this year. But Kremlinologists, including Putin’s former speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov, are convinced that no amount of public critique will slow Putin down. “He will continue to drag Russia toward a state-controlled system, away from a capitalist economy.” What Russians feelDespite Putin’s resilience and his benefitting from the war in Iran, public sentiment within Russia is increasingly demoralized. His calls for Russians to have “three, four or more” children—ostensibly for the future of the army and the economy—have gone unheard by women. None of his “traditional values” agenda has succeeded in preventing Russia from falling into a demographic crisis: demographers recorded 6% fewer births in the first four months of 2026 than in the same period a year earlier. As of February, a majority of Russians, up to 67%, supported peace negotiations, according to the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow. War fatigue, restricted social media, and disruptions to online banking are deepening this dark mood.My Instagram feed is flooded with selfie videos of furious Russians venting about internet disruptions, which have hit small businesses hard. I recently spoke with Lisa, an entrepreneur from Nizhny Novgorod and a mother of four, who asked that her last name be withheld out of fear for her safety. “We have no mobile Internet. I had to drive 20 kilometers to talk with you,” she said. “My kids cannot attend school online. I cannot reach my clients online. Some idiots in power want us to die of hunger.” The sentiment is far from unique. A glance at popular Russian women’s magazines such as Spletnik, Gossiper, and Symbol reveals nothing about women knitting socks for the front. Instead, their pages are full of stories about the lifestyles of the elite, celebrities, the British royalty, and social scandals in Moscow. Even Gennady Zyuganov, the 81-year-old leader of the traditionally loyalist Communist Party, who has a following of elderly people nostalgic for the Soviet Union, has joined the criticism. Speaking from the floor of Parliament on Apr. 21, he complained that the entire economy has sunk “to the bottom.” Considering these economic anxieties, allocating nearly one-third of the state budget to defense might seem like insanity. But not in Putin’s mindset. He doesn’t see himself as one of the few authoritarian leaders clinging to power on the edge of Europe. He sees himself as standing at the center of world events, a position made possible, in his view, by his military spending. The FSB, the Soviet-era KGB’s successor, is stoking fear among Russians. Over the past year, a group of lawyers recorded 486 state treason and espionage cases brought against Russian scientists, bureaucrats, military figures, and other government employees. Fear continues to rule Russia. Svetlana Gannushkina, an 88-year-old human rights defender who lived through the Soviet era, fears a return to its familiar terrors under Putin. For the past decade, Gannushkina has served on Putin's Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. She has provided legal assistance to tens of thousands of immigrants from Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine through her nonprofit. On Apr. 16, Gannushkina invited over 100 Russian human rights defenders to an annual conference on deportations and the mistreatment of foreigners. In previous years, most invitees had attended. “This year, we had only 47. People sent me notes that said, ‘Sorry, I am afraid.’” The prevailing fear is being conscripted into the military as punishment for dissident activity. “The best people fear the meat grinder,” Gannushkina told me, referring to the war in Ukraine. Just as Putin’s war in Ukraine has been normalized, so too has Trump’s war against Iran. “They are alike. They are consumed by megalomania and convinced they are on a mission,” she said. “Never in my 88 years have I experienced a more absurd time than now.”