President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shocked the audience at the annual security conference in Munich in 2007 by demanding the rollback of domineering American influence and a new balance of power in Europe more suitable to Moscow.
He didn’t get what he wanted — then.
Nearly two decades later, during the very same conference, top officials from President Trump’s cabinet made one thing clear: Mr. Putin has found an American administration that might help him realize his dream.
Comments by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance raised fears among attendees that under the new administration the U.S. might align with Russia and either assail Europe or abandon it altogether.
Such a shift, analysts say, would give Mr. Putin a previously unthinkable victory far more momentous for him than any objectives in Ukraine.
“Since the dawn of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the Kremlin has dreamed of pushing America out of its role as the cornerstone of European security,” said Andrew S. Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Putin surely is savvy enough to pounce on any openings provided by the new administration.”
The presence of American troops has been the underpinning of 80 years of peace in Western Europe since the end of World War II. But in a speech in Warsaw on Friday, before his arrival at the conference, Mr. Hegseth warned European leaders they shouldn’t assume that the U.S. will be there forever.
Later in the day, at the Munich conference, Mr. Vance delivered an even scarier message for many European attendees: The enemy he sees isn’t Russia or China, but Europe itself.
Mr. Vance set about attacking European nations for using what he called undemocratic methods to restrain far-right parties that in some cases have been backed by Russia. He argued that the continent needed to recognize the desires of its voters, stop attempting to moderate disinformation in undemocratic ways and instead allow such parties to thrive as the will of the people.
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” Mr. Vance said. “Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.”
Mr. Vance hit out in particular at Romania, where the country’s constitutional court in December canceled a presidential election that an ultranationalist backed by an apparent Russian influence campaign looked poised to win. The election has been rescheduled for May.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” he said.
The Kremlin for years has sought to weaken Europe by boosting parties that Mr. Vance argued must be allowed to flourish. The same day as his remarks at the conference, Mr. Vance met with the leader of Germany’s extreme right movement, which is contesting national elections this month, boosting a party Russia has sought to legitimize.
Moscow has also sought to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, realizing that a destruction of the longstanding Euro-Atlantic alliance from within will lead to a world where Moscow can wield far more power.
Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute for International Affairs in Rome, watched Mr. Vance’s speech and interpreted the message as a direct threat by the United States to the European Union, which far-right Europeans and the Kremlin both seek to dismantle. She called it a plot twist by the United States.
“The plot is we are out there to destroy you,” Ms. Tocci said.
“The point is not even Ukraine,” she added. “The point is the deliberate weakening if not destruction of Europe, of which Ukraine is a part.”
Ms. Tocci described Mr. Vance’s remarks as an attack on European democracy that perversely twisted the language of democracy itself, the way Russia often does when seeking to sow division within Europe.
A dramatic reorganization of power in Europe seemed like a pipe dream for Mr. Putin back when he articulated his vision in 2007 at the Munich conference. Robert M. Gates, the American defense minister at the time, sat in the audience and later dismissed the remarks as a throwback to the Cold War.
The Russian leader, however, has stuck unbendingly to his vision, making it a central point of his argument in the months leading to the war: that the West must be willing to discuss not just Ukrainian sovereignty but the whole security apparatus of Europe, which he claimed omitted Moscow and put it at existential risk.
Mr. Putin has cast his invasion of Ukraine as a broader battle against the West and the woke values he portrays as anathema, some of the same arguments Mr. Trump and Europe’s extreme-right leaders have made to wrest power in their own countries.
Mr. Putin believed that ultimately the United States and Europe would bend to him, Alexander Baunov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in a recent analysis.
The United States is changing, Mr. Baunov wrote, and the current Washington “is getting closer to Moscow not for the sake of Europe, but for its own sake — and even a little to spite Europe.”
The challenge to Europe comes as Germany and France, the European Union’s two biggest countries, both are suffering from crises of leadership, in part because of surging political movements brandishing the same rhetoric as Mr. Trump. In 2015, Germany and France took the lead in negotiating an end to Mr. Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine.
The United Kingdom, which left the European Union owing to a campaign Mr. Trump publicly backed, has seen its influence on the continent significantly weakened.
How far Mr. Trump’s deal-making with Mr. Putin will go is unclear, and the nascent rapprochement between Washington and Moscow could easily evaporate during negotiations over Ukraine.
But foreign leaders have managed to woo Mr. Trump into positions favorable to them before, and so far Russia is reaping benefits from the new administration.
The Kremlin has racked up a series of victories since Mr. Trump returned to the White House.
Less than a month into his second term, Mr. Trump has eviscerated U.S.A.I.D., the U.S. foreign aid agency long reviled by Moscow. He has pushed through Cabinet officials who regularly traffic in Kremlin talking points, including the new head of U.S. intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. He has exacerbated the discord in relations with Europe, threatening Washington’s closest allies with a trade war. He has empowered and elevated Elon Musk, who spreads falsehoods beneficial to Moscow on X and publicly advocated in favor of Germany’s far-right movement.
Mr. Trump will now influence, possibly without European leaders present, how the biggest conflict on the continent since World War II gets resolved, with implications that could go beyond Ukraine itself to affect the broader security balance in Europe.
Europeans, who see insurgent right-wing populist movements as a threat to the European Union and freedom on the continent, are worried, particularly given the apparent alignment of Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin against them.
“This is the moment in which we are at our most vulnerable,” Ms. Tocci said.
“If ultimately what you are trying to do is destroy this project,” she added, referring to the E.U., “this is the moment to do it.”
