Trump’s defeat is a political rout for Putin and Putinism

The U.S. elections have provided observers with endless food for thought, mainly concerning two categories within the political world. There has been much talk of the big loser, namely Donald Trump. There has been much talk of the crisis within his version of the GOP, and it would be a dream to see the civil war within the party evoked by Steve Bannon come to pass. There has been much talk of the winners, although it is still difficult to understand which alternative project to Trump has emerged victorious, apart from anti-Trump sentiment. Yet in the analyses following the mid-term elections, a further issue has been sidelined – one of which the US elections represent merely a piece of a larger mosaic: the crisis of Putinism. Trump’s defeat does not merely demonstrate that Putinism does not win votes. It also reveals something more significant concerning the alarming number of fronts on which the Russian president is struggling.

For Putin, a weaker Trump means knowing that, from January 2027, it will be politically more difficult for the White House to use the easing of sanctions as a threat against Ukraine: Trump will retain significant powers to grant exemptions, but a Democratic-majority Congress has all the tools to make any concessions to Putin more complicated than they are today. Trump’s downfall has not yet occurred – perhaps that of ‘Trumpism’ has – but the inability of ‘Putinism’ to add value during an election is not a phenomenon confined to America alone. Putin’s allies, or at least his followers, have also faced major problems in other countries in recent months. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has been ousted. In Serbia, the pro-Russian Aleksandar Vučić lost the election. In Romania, the pro-Russian candidate, George Simion, was soundly defeated. In Moldova, pro-Russian candidates lost the election a year ago. In France, Marine Le Pen’s party – despite having had deep economic ties with Putin’s sphere of influence – has realised that to stand any chance of winning the election, it must keep a safe distance from both Trump and Putin.

In Italy, the most pro-Russian party – Vannacci’s party – has run into difficulties. The ruling party closest to Putin’s agenda, the Lega, has been reduced to irrelevance. Parties on the right and even on the left regard support for Ukraine as crucial to defining the scope of their alliances. And apart from the AfD in Germany, Putin’s anti-European gambit is not yielding the hoped-for results across Europe. Putinism does not pay off; it does not win votes; and as if that were not enough, the Russian president faces other challenges to govern. There is NATO, which regards Russia as the most significant and direct threat to the security of its allies. There is the European Union, which continues to invest in Ukraine’s defence and which, partly for this reason, has chosen to swiftly approve the 90 billion loan for 2026 and 2027, with over 24 billion already disbursed, of which around 16.5 is earmarked for defence procurement. Then there is Ukraine, which, despite the difficulties caused by America’s intermittent disengagement, continues to hold its ground on the front line; according to ISW’s cartographic assessments, in October 2026 Russian forces suffered a net territorial loss of around 27 square kilometres, for the second consecutive month. There is the image of the Russian military superpower being put under pressure not only by Ukrainian resistance (for four years and counting), not only by the staggering number of lives lost by Russia in the war (as of 23 October 2026, Mediazona and BBC Russian had identified by name around 283,000 dead Russian servicemen), but also by the need to seek support from the North Korean army to address the shortfalls within its own forces (around 11,000 men during the initial phase of the deployment in Kursk, according to accounts gathered by the UK House of Commons). Added to all this is the fact that pipeline gas exports toEurope via pipeline fell by 44 per cent in 2025, that the group’s revenues fell by 8.8 per cent, and that Europe has no intention of returning to dependence on Russian gas, which accounted for 45 per cent of imports in 2021 and had fallen to 12 per cent by 2025.

It should also be noted that Putin’s magic touch, so to speak, is no longer appreciated in South America, now that Russia has lost one of its main allies in Venezuela in the form of Maduro. Nor can it be appreciated in the Middle East, where Russia has had to renegotiate its military presence in Syria and where, with Iran, it is playing a supporting role at an industrial level – to produce drones – even before doing so at a political level (politically speaking, outside the European and Asian spheres, the Russia to watch, if anything, is the one trying to form an alliance with China to fill the gaps left by Europe and the United States in Africa). Putin’s Russia, as we know, makes the headlines when it manages to dictate the agenda of fear, when it succeeds in creating chaos, when it provokes NATO, when it intrudes into our daily lives with drones in our airspace and cyber-attacks on our technological systems, and when it launches ferocious attacks on Ukraine – something it will continue to do even with a weakened Trump (This is how Putin negotiates: instilling fear to negotiate). Yet the political defeat of Trumpian Putinism is there to remind us of another truth that deserves to make the headlines. Putin feeds off our fears; fears breed hesitation; hesitation leads us to act based more on emotions than on facts; and throwing open the doors to emotions helps Russian trolls to thrive. In recent years, Russian trolls have taught us to deal with Putin’s fake news, which has at times put our democratic system to the test. But the most important piece of fake news to debunk – one used by those who are just waiting to wave white flags at the Kremlin – is a piece of fake news that has once again become glaringly obvious following the US elections. Putinism is not winning; Russia is not as strong as we are led to believe, and trying to reveal the truth when it comes to Putin is the only way to remind ourselves that Putinism not only does not work but is anything but invincible. All it takes is a willingness to understand it. All it takes is a willingness to see it. All it takes is a firm decision on which side to take: trolls or truth?