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Following the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in a difficult position. An old ideological and geopolitical ally has been killed with the full support of another anticipated ideological and geopolitical partner: U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Moscow was hardly thrilled at the beginning of this year, when U.S. forces captured and arrested Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, but Putin and the Kremlin refrained from harsh criticism at the time. In part, this was because of Washington\u2019s framing of the attack in terms of the Trump doctrine: The Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States. Seen from the Kremlin, Trump\u2019s actions in Latin America legitimize its own claim of a sphere of influence in Ukraine, Europe, and beyond. And after all, capture and arrest fall short of assassination.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Following the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin finds himself in a difficult position. An old ideological and geopolitical ally has been killed with the full support of another anticipated ideological and geopolitical partner: U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Moscow was hardly thrilled at the beginning of this year, when U.S. forces captured and arrested Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, but Putin and the Kremlin refrained from harsh criticism at the time. In part, this was because of Washington\u2019s framing of the attack in terms of the Trump doctrine: The Western Hemisphere belongs to the United States. Seen from the Kremlin, Trump\u2019s actions in Latin America legitimize its own claim of a sphere of influence in Ukraine, Europe, and beyond. And after all, capture and arrest fall short of assassination.<\/p>\n
The events in Iran, however, are taking place in what Russia considers its hemisphere and, to some extent, its sphere of influence\u2014not only geographically, but because Iran is a member of the Russia- and China-led BRICS. This time, accordingly, there was no restraint on condemning the killing. In a message sent to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Putin said<\/a><\/u> that the assassination of Khamenei and members of his family had been \u201ccommitted in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, however, the message published on the Kremlin website was phrased in a way that avoided making direct accusations against Trump and the United States. Putin may flaunt his strength and play the role of<\/span> a strongman who does what he likes, but in reality, he cannot even afford to verbally attack a U.S. president even as that president is destroying Putin\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n Twice since the beginning of the year, Putin has found himself in a difficult position before his allies and the global south, on whose behalf Russia presumes to speak. He had bet on Trump being a different kind of U.S. leader and invested serious hopes in rapprochement with Washington, not least because of the Trump administration\u2019s friendly neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war and negotiations. It will not be easy for Putin to exit his special relations with Trump without jeopardizing the latter\u2019s helpful stance toward Moscow. Whereas the Russian foreign ministry issued a classic anti-U.S. statement<\/a> that struck<\/span> some of <\/span>the old Soviet anti-imperialist notes<\/span>, the Kremlin remained silent on the perpetrators of the attack<\/span>.<\/p>\n Criticism of the United States has effectively been delegated to the foreign ministry and the Russian state media<\/a>, while the Kremlin works on building its special relationship to Trump and his close associates, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner and golf partner-cum-negotiator Steve Witkoff. These silences show Putin as a weak strongman\u2014a leader who prides himself on unconstrained strength but who cannot in reality afford to offend, even verbally, a U.S. president destroying his allies.<\/p>\n For the Kremlin, showing too much support for Iran would be to openly side with Trump\u2019s enemies, thereby risking incurring his wrath and becoming a party in a conflict against the United States. It would torpedo Washington\u2019s valuable friendly neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war and any chance of the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Confrontation is clearly not the Kremlin\u2019s chosen strategy for dealing with Trump. It\u2019s certainly not in Moscow\u2019s interests to push Trump toward the widespread view among U.S. politicians that lumps Putin and Khamenei together.<\/p>\n Obviously, Putin does care about what is happening in Iran. The violent death of a head of state has always been a topic of obsession for Putin. The killing of deposed Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011 became a turning point in Russian policy<\/a> and one of the key justifications<\/a> for Russia\u2019s intensified anti-Western course.<\/p>\n The killing of a leader in office is an unpleasant reminder that such a thing is possible\u2014that the leader and his status may be sacralized at home and recognized abroad, only for someone to come along for whom that means nothing. A single bomb in a single second reduces the sacred figure to an ordinary mortal.<\/p>\n In Putin\u2019s worldview, it is permissible to kill traitors and opposition figures, but the head even of an enemy state\u2014like the head of an enemy clan in rival mafia groups\u2014is to some extent protected by even the simple fact of contact between the bosses. None of this, of course, applies to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has survived multiple Russian assassination attempts. That\u2019s because Putin does not accept the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign country separate from Russia, which, in the Kremlin\u2019s eyes, makes Zelensky just a traitor to be eliminated.<\/p>\n