On March 9, 2026, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone for about an hour. According to the Kremlin, the exchange covered Iran, Ukraine, and several dossiers related to the state of the world. Diplomatic adviser Yury Ushakov described it as a “serious, frank and constructive” conversation. At the same time, in Ukraine, Russian strikes continued. In Kramatorsk, an attack killed one person and damaged about forty houses, according to local authorities. According to Ukrainian regional authorities, a drone attack on Kharkiv took place on the night of March 10–11. It caused two deaths and seven injuries. The Kremlin’s whole method lies in this gap. Speaking at the center while striking the periphery. Donning the garments of a necessary interlocutor without shedding those of a belligerent.
Putin-Trump Call: Staging Russia’s Return
Russian dramaturgy must be taken seriously, not to surrender to it, but to measure its leverage. The Kremlin knows the symbolic value of a presidential call. It knows what such an exchange signals to chancelleries, markets, and public opinion. It suggests that Russia has not disappeared from the game, despite sanctions and proclaimed isolation. Moreover, the war persists. It still speaks to Washington. It remains present on the Iranian dossier. It re-enters the circulation of major crises.
The March 9 call has more than diplomatic significance. It is a political message. Externally, it means Moscow wants to be counted among the powers to be dealt with. Internally, it feeds the image of a leader seated at the center of power relations, master of his tempo, able to shift from Ukraine to Iran, from the front line to geopolitics, without changing tone. This continuity of tone is one of the strengths of Putinism.
Nothing at this stage allows one to infer a substantial turning point. The Kremlin delivered only a tightly framed presentation of the exchange. But that framing itself is already a political fact. It aims to show a Putin who still matters, and perhaps even more as disorder spreads. The more the world fragments, the more Moscow intends to assert its presence as a factor everyone will have to reckon with.
Ukraine Front: The War Continues to Dictate the Day’s Truth
The war does not dissolve into talking points. Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on March 10 an advance by the Ukrainian army. In a month and a half, it retook 435 square kilometers in the south. This claim is the word of the Ukrainian authorities and should be attributed as such. It does not erase the uncertainty on the front nor the threat that Zelensky himself continues to describe. The Ukrainian president indeed fears a new Russian advance in Ukraine this spring.
The whole situation in Ukraine rests in this double movement. Showing that the country resists, sometimes regains ground, without denying that Russian pressure remains strong. From Kyiv, the discourse must hold together proof of endurance and warning about the danger. Allies must be reassured without being given an excuse to relax. It must be argued that the war is neither lost nor stabilized.
On March 10, Zelensky also said the United States proposed a new round of negotiations. This cycle concerns Ukraine and Russia for the week of March 16. Additionally, a meeting is mentioned in Switzerland or Turkey. Again, nothing authorizes speaking of an imminent Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. In this long war, the possibility of talks is often prepared before it is known whether the political conditions exist to hold them. But the announcement matters, because it reminds that the diplomatic question never disappeared. It hovers over the battlefield as a hypothesis always advanced, always suspended.
At the same time, Kyiv strives to keep European support at a visible level. On March 8, Rob Jetten, prime minister of the Netherlands, visited the Ukrainian capital. With Zelensky, they discussed political support, security, energy and international justice. The Ukrainian head of state again raised the future special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. This project is slated to take shape in The Hague. On March 11, the president of the Bundestag, Julia Klöckner, also visited Kyiv to reaffirm German support. This diplomatic ballet says one simple thing. Ukraine fears as much the wearing down of attention as the exhaustion of the front.
The Great Flexibility of a Single Hard Line
What Putin has achieved in recent days is less a return than a layering of crises. He does not replace one dossier with another. He stacks them. Ukraine does not disappear behind Iran. Oil does not chase away the war. The conversation with Washington does not erase sanctions or the dead. Everything is juxtaposed, and it is precisely this juxtaposition that serves the Kremlin.
On the Ukrainian front, Putin remains the leader of a war of attrition. On the Iranian file, he hints at a role as an experienced interlocutor, strengthened by a long-standing relationship with Tehran. In the energy realm, the regional crisis and its possible effects on markets offer an opportunity for Russia. Indeed, it allows it to remind that it remains a resources power. Diplomatically, a simple call with the American president is enough to reopen the question of its centrality.
This is not a contradiction, but a method. The Russian power works to make it felt that no crisis can be thought of in isolation. Ukraine, Iran, the sanctions, oil, European security, channels of negotiation, relations with the United States. In this vision, each scene illuminates the others. A flare-up in the Middle East can shift Western priorities and strain markets. That could loosen the economic noose and give the Kremlin room to maneuver. A diplomatic conversation can, by itself, produce the image of a power one cannot do without.
What makes this strategy effective is its refusal to choose between coercion and speech. The Kremlin does not present diplomacy as the opposite of force. It practices it as its extension. It talks without renouncing striking. It hints that a political outcome remains possible, but on a tempo that suits it. Moreover, it acts to maintain the balance of power to its advantage.
The Other War, The One Of Networks And Vulnerabilities
On March 9, the Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD issued an alert about a global phishing campaign attributed to actors linked to the Russian state. According to them, targets included public officials, military personnel and civil servants. They also included journalists and other people of strategic interest using Signal and WhatsApp. The objective, according to the Dutch services, was to gain access to sensitive information. To do so, they took over individual accounts.
This cyber episode is not marginal. It completes the picture. Russian power is not exercised only in armored columns, drones or presidential conversations. It also flows through technical flaws, chains of trust, and the digital habits of contemporary power. Again, one must resist the temptation of the spectacular. What matters is not the novelistic effect of a clandestine operation, but its logic. It is about approaching exchanges and expanding the zone of uncertainty. Moreover, it aims to weaken decision-making channels. It is also important to recall that the conflict constantly overflows its most visible forms.
The notion of hybrid war is often overused. Here it regains its rigor. Russia does not fight a single battle, on a single theater, or in a single language. It combines. Military strikes, energy pressure, diplomatic staging, narrative offensive, cyber intrusion. All contribute to producing the same impression of presence. Even under sanctions, even engaged in a long war, Moscow wants to remain capable of disrupting everywhere.
Time, Raw Material Of Putinian Power
One better understands, at this stage, what Putin seeks to obtain. Not a clear victory, not yet a peace, perhaps not even a clarification. He seeks above all to hold. To last longer than angers, surges and media frenzies. He presents himself as the man of the long term against opponents often fixated on urgency. Kyiv counts its dead and its ammunition. Europeans try to preserve their unity. Washington spreads its attention across several crisis hotspots. The Kremlin, for its part, works to make time a political weapon.
The call with Trump is part of this logic. It does not instantly change the reality of the war. It proves neither a decisive rapprochement nor an imminent détente. But it produces an image useful to Putin. That of a leader the world calls when multiple crises intersect. It is the image of a chief who never completely leaves the stage. Indeed, he has made himself necessary to understanding the disorder.
For Ukraine and its allies, the risk is there. Confusing centrality with legitimacy. Mistaking Putin’s permanence for a form of stability. Reading his diplomatic availability as a sign of new moderation. Nothing in the facts of March 9, 10, and 11 allows such a conclusion. The strikes continued. Threats on the front remain. Hybrid operations persist. What is observed more surely is a power that perfects its art of speaking. At the same time, it constrains.
At bottom, the Russian bet remains very simple. Make sure no one can look away, neither from the battlefield nor from the Kremlin’s phone. It is a saturation policy. Putin wants to occupy war, negotiation, energy, cyber security, and the international narrative simultaneously. Not to resolve crises, but to make himself indispensable to them. It is likely this mix of patience, hardness and plasticity that makes his posture so hard to undo. The great illusion he offers the world is that of a man of order. What he administers, with constancy, is a power of disorder.