On Friday, Russia attacked Lviv, a major Ukrainian city near the Polish border, using Oreshnik: an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile. Security-camera footage captured brief flashes in the sky, the missile’s multiple warheads entering the atmosphere at 10 times the speed of sound, and then—impact. The missile that struck Lviv did not carry a nuclear payload, but it did carry a political one, at a moment when Vladimir Putin appears to be cornered and Donald Trump is more belligerent than ever.
Firing an Oreshnik comes with logistical headaches. The launch must be carried out by the Strategic Rocket Forces—the core of Russia’s nuclear triad—and it cannot be a surprise. Moscow notifies the United States in advance to avoid triggering a retaliatory strike. More important, without a nuclear payload, the missile has limited military value; Russia has other weapons capable of inflicting similar damage at a fraction of the cost. The most logical reason for Russia’s use of this weapon at this time is to remind America that it is still a superpower and that Putin is still in control.
Trump has been friendly to Putin—but not useful to him. Moscow entered 2026 under more U.S. sanctions than before Trump’s reelection, with a much-worse economy, and is unable to agree to any of the peace proposals on the table. The Kremlin is all smiles whenever Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is in town, and Putin still calls Trump ahead of the U.S. president’s meetings with Volodymyr Zelensky, but Oreshnik is the Kremlin’s statement piece. The missile’s launch means that Russia’s hopes for an agreeable Trump have more or less vanished—especially after U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3.
[Read: Why Maduro probably can’t count on Putin]
Numerous pundits and opinion pieces suggested that Trump’s Venezuela raid would send a welcome signal to Russia and China: Spheres of influence are back, and the U.S. will dominate the Western Hemisphere while allowing China to invade Taiwan and Putin to freely go after the countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact.
Beijing, however, is unlikely to be seriously reconsidering its decades-old Taiwan policy based on Washington’s 17th regime change in South America. As for Putin, he did not need any “signals” from George W. Bush to attack Georgia in 2008. He never received a green light from Barack Obama to annex Crimea in 2014 or intervene in Syria a year later. And even though Joe Biden upheld the so-called rules-based international order, Putin still launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Years before American bombs fell on Caracas, the Russian leader was waging the largest land war in Europe since World War II, alongside an ongoing hybrid campaign across the continent. He didn’t need U.S. Special Forces to storm Maduro’s compound to order Zelensky’s assassination—he’s already tried and failed repeatedly to have the Ukrainian president killed.
The expectation in Moscow was that America would be withdrawing from the world, but just in the past few weeks, Washington has bombed Nigeria, Syria, and Venezuela, and issued threats to bomb Iran (again), should the Islamic Republic open fire on protesters, which it has done. The Kremlin tried to shield an oil tanker that the United States was determined to seize—allowing it to fly the Russian flag, issuing diplomatic warnings, and even shadowing it with Russian military vessels, reportedly including a submarine. The U.S. Coast Guard took the ship anyway and then seized a second tanker near Venezuela.
On January 3, Russia lost a major foothold in South America. In the past two decades, Moscow has provided $34 billion to Venezuela, mostly to purchase Russian-made weapons, and loaned it $3.15 billion that now may not be paid back. Russia also signed a defense-cooperation pact with Cuba last spring. The Trump administration is threatening that country, too, and Moscow is not really in a position to prevent Washington from raiding Havana.
Washington’s rhetoric toward Moscow has changed as well. While visiting shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quipped about the Venezuela operation, “Seems those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work so well, did they?” When asked what safeguards were in place to prevent escalation with Russia over Venezuela, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered one of the most unpleasant lines Moscow could hear: “We’re not concerned about an escalation with Russia with regards to Venezuela.” He added that the United States has always expected Moscow to provide only “rhetorical” support for the Maduro regime. He then wished Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a merry Christmas.
Putin’s options for retaliation are limited at best. Ukraine was supposed to be for Russia what Venezuela was for the U.S.—a quick, victorious war against a much smaller neighbor. That war has now lasted longer than the Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany (1941–45). This time, however, no cavalry, no army reserves, and no Soviet tank divisions will be plowing through Europe. Russia has lost many, if not most, of its tanks. It has no navy capable of defending allied regimes such as Venezuela and Cuba against the United States. After spending years trying to conquer Ukraine, Putin has effectively narrowed Russia’s room for maneuver to Ukraine’s borders alone. A Russian “victory” now amounts to little more than a flattened village with a Russian flag planted in the rubble. Even then, success is never assured: Putin believed he had captured the small city of Kupiansk, until Zelensky posted a video of himself there. Thus comes the symbolic firing of the intermediate-range Oreshnik—one of the last ways for Russia to project its power.
Trump is especially reactive to anything nuclear, or the “n-word,” as he calls it. Last summer, he announced tariffs on India and an additional penalty for purchasing Russian oil, and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev responded on Telegram that Trump should “revisit his favorite movies about the living dead and recall just how dangerous the mythical ‘Dead Hand’ can be”—a reference to Russia’s Cold War–era automatic nuclear retaliation system. Trump fired back on Truth Social: “Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”
As evidenced by new sanctions on Russian oil, the seizure of Russian tankers, and the continuing flow of American weapons to Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly overplayed his hand with the president of the United States. What’s worse for Putin—and possibly for the world—is that this Trump is on the warpath. Most of his recent press conferences have included references to bombing or regime-changing one country or another (the list now includes a NATO country, too). This is not the real-estate or cryptocurrency Trump. This is Trump with guns—a leader whose doctrine boils down to “ICE for Americans. Delta Force for everyone else.”
On Friday, Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Trump whether he would ever order a mission to capture Putin. Trump replied, in part, “I don’t think it’s going to be necessary. I’ve always had a great relationship with him.”
The statement read as deeply insulting to the Russian leader. Still, launching an intermediate-range ballistic missile to send a message to this new version of Trump may not play out the way Putin intends. Rather than reasserting Russia’s power, it risks putting two aging authoritarians with nuclear stockpiles on a path of mutual escalation—one of the most dangerous developments since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and perhaps even since the Cold War.
