Putin played a long game. It's starting to pay off.

More than a decade before Russia's armed forces poured over the border into Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin stood before world leaders and delivered a long, icy speech demanding a radical overhaul of the world order.

- Matthew Luxmoore

"We have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security," Putin said in the 2007 speech in Munich, accusing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of breaking a promise by expanding into Eastern Europe and calling for an end to U.S. hegemony.

Tensions between Moscow and the West grew in the years that followed. Russia sent its military into Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine spurred a broad Western effort to isolate Moscow and pushed new countries into the ranks of NATO.

Putin dug in as his military suffered battlefield setbacks and his economy was squeezed by Western sanctions. He played the long game. Now, that perseverance appears to be paying off as the world shifts decisively in his direction. The U.S. has paused military aid to Ukraine and called for an end to Moscow's isolation. It is distancing itself from traditional allies in Europe.

"We all see how rapidly the world is changing," Putin told his security services on Thursday, after a U.S.-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia. Moscow and Washington, he said, were now ready to address "strategic problems in the architecture of the world."

Even Putin's most hawkish advisers have been surprised by the speed with which the tone coming from the White House has changed in recent weeks, according to people who travel to Moscow and speak with Russian officials.

"The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations," Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week of President Trump's team.

Trump, who had been calling for both sides to end the war, turned his attention to Ukraine in recent days. He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator and blamed him for starting the war, echoing comments by Russian officials. That culminated in an on-camera clash Friday in the White House between the Ukrainian leader and Trump.