At his annual live call-in show late last week, Vladimir Putin wryly offered political asylum to James Comey “if he faces prosecution of any kind” in the United States, asking, “What’s the difference between the FBI director and [Edward] Snowden?” There is, of course, a clear distinction between slipping your own unclassified memo to the press and leaking a massive trove of data about classified National Security Agency programs. There’s another important difference: the latter redounded to Russian president’s benefit, whereas the Justice Department’s Russia investigation decidedly has not.

Putin surely recognizes this. But he has been striving to maintain his air of unruffled equanimity in what has been a rough stretch for him, from the massive protests across Russia to the near-unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate, which imposed new sanctions against Russia and curbed the president’s power to lift them unilaterally. True to form, Putin has coolly described these sanctions as “harmful” to U.S.-Russia relations, but called any talk of retaliation “premature.”

Donald Trump’s election was supposed to be a boon to Putin. Instead, things have been going quite poorly for him. Whatever goals the Russians had in meddling in the U.S. presidential election last year, be it to elect a president more favorable to lifting sanctions, punish Hillary Clinton, discredit Western democracies, or, as many analysts say, sow chaos in Washington and disrupt the international liberal order, Putin seems to be failing on most counts.

There is indeed chaos in Washington, though largely contained to the White House, and Trump has injected some uncertainty into longstanding relationships with allies. His refusal to affirm the mutual-defense commitment of the NATO treaty and his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement are sowing divisions between America and Europe that could do long-term damage. The Trump administration seems uninterested in promoting democratic values abroad, and surely any time the U.S. retreats in its leadership role, it benefits other world powers such as Russia and China.

But earlier fears of a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy, driven by Trump’s isolationist rhetoric and friendliness toward strongmen, are not panning out. Trump stacked his national security and foreign policy teams with establishment picks who have largely stuck to conventional Republican positions: punitive policies against Russia, Cuba, and Iran; cooperation with China on deterring North Korea; more troops in Afghanistan, and more bombs in Syria.