| | | In a Sudden Shift, Trump Says Ukraine Can Win the War With Russia
President Trump’s pivot could give him room to distance himself from a conflict that he once promised to solve in days or weeks.
nytimes.com
Several European officials suspected that by distancing himself from the war, Mr. Trump was washing his hands of a conflict that he once promised to solve in days or weeks
President Trump reversed himself on one of the key foreign policy issues of his presidency on Tuesday, abandoning his insistence that Ukraine give up land to strike a peace deal with Russia and instead declaring that Ukraine, with the support of Europe, was “in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
His turnabout on social media shortly after a meeting in New York with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was a head-spinning pivot. After his three-hour meeting with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in Alaska more than five weeks ago, he insisted that Mr. Zelensky would have to face reality and make a deal, giving up territory to its larger and stronger neighbor.
Mr. Trump provided no rationale for his stunning turnaround, though several European officials suspected that by distancing himself from the war, the president was washing his hands of a conflict that he once promised to solve in days or weeks. In his eight months in office, Mr. Trump has ricocheted from one position to another on Ukraine.
In February, he slammed Mr. Zelensky for insisting on American aid, yelling at him in the Oval Office, “You don’t have the cards.” In the spring, he cultivated Mr. Putin, exempting him from tariffs. This summer, he rolled out a red carpet for him in Alaska.
Now, he sounded as if he was siding anew with Ukraine while also taking something of a back seat, ending with the words: “I wish both Countries well.”
Mr. Trump never explained why he now believes that Ukraine, which has continuously lost modest amounts of territory to Russian troops over the past year, would suddenly be able to seize it back
Hours after he declared Ukraine could “win” over the Russians, perhaps even taking land beyond its own boundaries, he was contradicted by his own secretary of state and acting national security adviser, Marco Rubio. Mr. Rubio said the war in Ukraine “cannot end militarily,” and predicted “it will end at the negotiating table,” reflecting Mr. Trump’s previous position.
In Alaska, Mr. Trump had taken a similar position, even promising to meet with the two adversaries together to hammer out an agreement. He had rejected the idea of pressing Mr. Putin for a cease-fire, declaring that a full peace accord would be more permanent.
With Mr. Rubio, Mr. Trump was even in discussions with European allies about creating some kind of post-peace accord security force for Ukraine, one that he said could include American air support, to protect a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.
But on Tuesday, after his nearly hourlong speech to the United Nations in which he only briefly touched on the Ukraine conflict that has consumed American national security officials since the Russian invasion in February 2022, Mr. Trump dispensed with that strategy.
Clearly frustrated with Mr. Putin, who embarrassed him by never executing on the peace negotiations that Mr. Trump insisted they had agreed upon, Mr. Trump wrote a long post on Russia’s economic and strategic difficulties. “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,” he said, using his distinctive capitalization. “This is not distinguishing Russia.”
He added that Mr. Putin’s forces were a “paper tiger” — the reverse of how he had described the nuclear armed nation before. He also wrote about gasoline lines and the vast amounts of money being spent by Russia on the war. “Putin and Russia are in BIG economic trouble,” he said.
But all of that was true before the meeting in Alaska. And Mr. Trump never explained why he now believed that Ukraine, which has continuously lost modest amounts of territory to Russian troops over the past year, would suddenly be able to seize it back.
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