A rchive Date
[ 26-09-2025 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/trump-russia-putin-ukraine-zelensky-truth-social.html
You Might Think Trump Has Had a Change of Heart on Ukraine. Not So Fast.
By Fred Kaplan Sept 26, 2025
President Donald Trump made a startling turnaround after his chat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this week, deriding Russia as a “paper tiger” and touting Ukraine as a “great spirit” that could “fight and WIN” the war with the help of the European Union and NATO.
The question is whether his Truth Social comments—a dramatic departure from his dismissal of Ukraine’s military prospects and his genuflection to Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a peer power—augur a change in U.S. policy. The answer seems to be No, not yet and not likely.
First, Trump has blown back and forth on this war so many times, seeming to side with Russia, then Ukraine, then Russia again. It’s unwise to infer anything from any comment, even one as unequivocal as this. (Top Ukrainians appraised it accordingly, expressing surprise and gratitude but not taking it as a shift in the course of the war.)
Second, the Washington Post on Thursday quoted a “senior White House official” who said Trump wrote the post as part of a “negotiating tactic” to pressure Russia to wind down the war. The problem here is that if you tell the world that you’ve said something as part of a negotiating tactic, it’s not a very effective negotiating tactic. In this case, it signals the Russians and the Ukrainians not to take the comments seriously—and therefore deprives it of whatever impact it might have had.
Third, Trump’s post tells its readers fairly explicitly not to take it very seriously. At its conclusion, right after “Putin and Russia are in BIG economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump writes, “In any event, I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
Not exactly a stirring embrace of Ukraine or a steely warning to Putin’s Russia. If anything, it sounds like Trump backing away from the war, dissociating from its course and consequences. There is good news here for Kyiv. At least he’s not saying he’ll cut off aid, as he has at times in the recent past, but there’s no sign he’ll be increasing it. He’ll be in the bleachers, not down on the sidelines with the coaches, if he keeps watching the game at all. It’s “not my war,” he has said in the past. That still seems to be the dominant attitude.
But why did Trump say what he said? What impelled him, and what does it mean? No one knows for sure, maybe not even Trump himself. But there are some possibilities. For example, at one point, he writes:
Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like “a paper tiger.” When the people living in Moscow, and all of the Great Cities, Towns, and Districts all throughout Russia, find out what is really going on with this War, the fact that it’s almost impossible for them to get Gasoline through the long lines that are being formed, and all of the other things that are taking place in their War Economy, where most of their money is being spent on fighting Ukraine, which has Great Spirit, and only getting better, Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!
Some U.S. intelligence reports have made just these points—maybe not that Russia is a paper tiger, but that the Russian army hasn’t made any advances lately, despite the massive cannon fodder it’s thrown into the battle, and that its economy is meanwhile weakening. Has Trump been briefed on these reports? Does he believe, and act on, intelligence reports, especially those that rub against his preconceptions?
It may also be the case that Trump is genuinely annoyed with Putin, especially since their Alaska summit, when the Russian president brushed off all Trump’s urgings to declare a ceasefire, then hold serious peace negotiations. Trump has long admired Putin because of the Kremlin leader’s strength. But if it turns out his regime is actually weakening and he’s ignoring Trump’s attempts to broker peace and win the Nobel Prize—well, maybe Putin has been knocked down a notch in Trump’s eyes. Trump might think, then, that it’s a good time to take a whack at the man and his country; it might slap him into coming around. (It probably won’t, but this may have been Trump’s intent—hence the senior official’s talk of a “negotiating tactic,” even though no negotiations are in progress.)
The war continues. The U.S. will keep helping the Ukrainians a bit, but not enough for them to win or for Putin to conclude he can’t win. That’s about the best one can say of Trump’s new stance, however sturdy or wobbly it may turn out.
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