Today, that contrast is unmistakable.
Donald Trump—despite the controversies surrounding him, despite the anger his tariff wars still provoke—has stunned the world by helping open a path toward a calmer Middle East.
His aggressive pressure on Iran’s proxies and his unflinching stance against Hamas have done what years of diplomatic half-steps could not: they have exposed the militants’ brutality, disrupted their networks, and given the region its first glimmer of quiet in years.
Even his willingness to explore mediation in the Ukraine war shows a recognition that global leadership demands engagement, not retreat.
And while Trump is—undeniably—one of the most polarizing figures in the West, he has demonstrated something rare in the current geopolitical landscape: the capacity to force adversaries to recalculate.
He has shown that unpredictability, when paired with resolve, can sometimes create openings where conventional diplomacy repeatedly failed.
But there is one man who refuses to recalculate anything: Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s war in Ukraine is not strategy. It is obsession.
A futile, backward-looking attempt to resurrect the ghost of a Soviet empire that even Russians no longer genuinely desire. He has chained his nation to a fantasy—one built on stolen territories, silenced dissent, and the cynical rewriting of history.
While Trump attempts to pull volatile regions toward negotiation, Putin drags Europe toward a darker era. While much of the world searches for a formula for peace, Putin clings to a delusion of conquest.
His ambitions are not merely outdated; they are reckless, corrosive, and utterly detached from the needs of the Russian people.
Under his rule, Russia has become a nation in decline - isolated by sanctions, drained by demographic collapse, censored into intellectual stagnation, dependent on China in ways unthinkable twenty years ago.
Empires die slowly. But fantasies of empire die violently.
The tragedy is that Russia could have chosen a different path. This is the country of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky, of groundbreaking physicists, of pioneers who sent humanity into space.
A nation this gifted does not need to steal land to prove its worth. It needs leadership that believes in its future instead of worshipping its past.
Putin has become the single greatest obstacle to that future.
The world has seen the contrast: Trump, whatever his faults, has shown a willingness to push adversaries toward de-escalation. Putin has shown a willingness to sacrifice the lives of Ukrainians and Russians alike merely to satisfy his personal mythmaking.
This is a moment of stark choice for Moscow.
Russia can continue down Putin’s path—a path of isolation, militarism, and irreversible decline. Or it can step back from the abyss and reclaim its place as a constructive global power. The Middle East’s fragile opening proves that even the most entrenched conflicts can shift when leaders decide that peace is a strength, not a concession.
Putin still has a narrow window to choose peace. But every day he refuses, Russia’s future grows smaller.
And history’s judgment grows harsher.
The author is the chairman of Asia-Pacific Economic and Culture Association.
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