Trump’s reported message to his fellow leader further suggests a realisation that Russia may attempt to maximise its territorial gains before his inauguration in January. Just as importantly, it shows that the President-elect doesn’t want Putin to think he can get away with pursuing this course of short-term escalation. As Anatol Lieven has observed: “If the Russians know the only territory they will get in Ukraine is that which they actually occupy, then they obviously have a huge incentive to take as much ground as possible before Trump enters office.”

Also worthy of attention is Trump’s apparent reference to the US military presence in Europe, the implication here being that Putin can expect an American military riposte if he orders escalatory action. This has put the Kremlin in a difficult position, as any future Russian conciliatory actions would appear to be prompted by American threats.

Trump’s statements serve as a reminder that Moscow can’t take anything for granted — and the Russians deeply dislike foreign unpredictability. Befitting their KGB backgrounds, Putin and top hawks such as Nikolai Patrushev revel in the psychometric analysis of foreign interlocutors. But while Kremlin advisors view Trump as more personally malleable than Joe Biden, they also recognise that he is highly unpredictable and will soon be surrounded by a national security bureaucracy which is deeply sceptical of Russia’s agenda.

During Trump’s first term, the Kremlin learnt the hard way that conciliatory rhetoric cannot be relied upon as a precursor to conciliatory policy action. Moscow was deeply disappointed, for example, when Trump rejected Putin’s protestations of innocence and expelled dozens of Russian spies following an alleged GRU assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal in 2018. Moscow was similarly disheartened when Trump withdrew the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in response to Russian breaches of the agreement, and then authorised new US nuclear weapon developments. That’s before mentioning his decision to have a US warship sail into the mouth of the Russian Pacific Fleet headquarters in 2020.

In a similar vein, by now dangling US military power in Putin’s face, Trump is signalling that his prior campaign rhetoric of needing to make all concessions necessary to prevent World War III was, perhaps, just rhetoric. The Kremlin wants America to cut support for Ukraine so that Kyiv is forced to the negotiating table on its knees. Instead, Trump is at least teasing the prospect that he may put significant pressure on Russia to secure a peace deal that endures.