But Richard Bronze, of market-monitoring firm Energy Aspects, says the sharpest pressure will be felt in Latin America, where Trump wants to reduce the influence of rival powers such as Russia and China.
“Reliance on Russia, whether it’s for military equipment or whether it’s for broader diplomatic cover, is not going to be seen as necessarily a particularly effective strategy,” he says.
Beyond his own backyard, however, Trump seems open to the idea of big powers such as Russia having geographic spheres of influence.
Bronze reckons some countries in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia might therefore still see value in keeping ties to Putin.
“If we’re in a world where an alliance with the US is only as protective as the last thing you did for Donald Trump, you probably need to be weighing up how much interest does Russia have in your neighbourhood, and how much capacity might it have now, and over the next couple of years, to project that influence,” he says.
“And then you’d be trying to balance your diplomatic relations and your security arrangements accordingly.”
But Putin’s potential to wield influence may wane if the oil price remains stuck at five-year lows, or even drops further.
Oil and gas income will make up less than a quarter of the Russian budget this year, down from half just a few years ago.
A sharply rising rouble is cutting the amount of money that comes into the Kremlin coffers from selling Urals crude and then converting the proceeds to local currency.
Urals crude has dropped below $50 a barrel, although the government’s predicted 2026 budget deficit of 1.6pc of GDP is predicated on a price of $59.
