Trump’s shift in tone may be helpful to Ukraine, but more than words are needed. Explore what this change means for the ongoing conflict and...
Trump’s shift in tone may be helpful to Ukraine, but more than words are needed. Explore what this change means for the ongoing conflict and international support. Who can keep up? In a single post on social media, Donald Trump said that the military in Kyiv, which is under a lot of pressure, could "WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form."
From Ukraine's point of view, the comments do suggest that the US president has given up on trying to get Moscow to offer ceasefire talks in exchange for Donetsk province. This was briefly what happened at his summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
Trump's new tone is important to Kyiv. But for the US president to really want Ukraine to win on the battlefield, it would take more than just more economic penalties. It would also need a lot more American weapons and probably even direct military action from the west.
Since its full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russia has only had to pull back twice: in the spring of that year, when it was too far around Kyiv, and again in the fall of that year, when it faced a similar problem in Kherson and defenses were weak in the Kharkiv region before the Kremlin launched a mobilization drive.
Ukraine's counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 failed in a very important way. Kyiv was given Western tanks, rockets, and armored vehicles, but they didn't use them well. They spread them out along the front in strikes that didn't take into account Russian mines, trenches, and other defenses.
The gains were only about six miles at most in a few places along the front, and they have been erased by the Russians' slow but determined progress from Avdiivka to the gates of Pokrovsk in the middle of Donetsk. Moscow has been in charge since the beginning of 2024 and doesn't seem likely to give up.
Trump has talked about tightening economic sanctions by putting secondary taxes on countries that buy Russian oil, but he has only done this with India and not with China, which is a bigger problem. Before taking action in the summer, the US president talked about a 30-day limit. He then shortened it, and after the meeting in Alaska, he forgot all about it.
Still, this won't help Ukraine win the war. A more coordinated flow of US weapons would help Kyiv, but Ukraine needs to improve its air defenses more right away. But Trump isn't offering that. Instead, he wrote that Ukraine could win with "time, patience, and the financial support of Europe."
As Trump says this, the updated weapons supply program from the summer will continue. Under this plan, European countries pay for US weapons for Ukraine through NATO. Even though it's clear that this helps Ukraine, there isn't much hope for a big change on the ground since most of the fighting is done by drones.
Ukrainians have known for a long time that they can't use force to take back land that Russia took. In February, Zelenskyy agreed that some or all of the land that Russia had taken over since 2014 would have to be returned to Ukraine through "diplomatic means." Other experts, on the other hand, have talked about using a very strong military defense.
It's likely that Ukraine would only be able to push the Russian attacker out in one of two situations. One is a big change in how the west is involved, like NATO air power getting directly involved. But this idea is so politically unlikely that it should be thrown out. The second is a fall of Russia, which would likely be caused by a change of government at the Kremlin, but there are no signs of that either.