President Donald 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 Zelensky would have to face reality and make a deal, giving up territory to its larger and stronger neighbour.
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, Trump has ricocheted from one position to another on Ukraine.
On Wednesday after Trump's turnaround, Zelensky appealed for more military aid to keep fighting Russia in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. His call to arms was accompanied by warnings that the world was entering a new era in military technology.
Invoking incursions by Russian drones into Poland and Estonia in recent weeks, which have raised tensions between Europe and Russia, Zelensky stressed the need for more weapons even as he warned that they were evolving in ways that now endanger all nations. Drones might one day allow terrorists or states to deliver a nuclear device, he said, adding that the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence was creating new dangers.
“We are now living through the most destructive arms race in human history,” Zelensky said.
In February, Trump had slammed Zelensky for insisting on American aid, yelling at him in the Oval Office: "You don't have the cards." In the spring, he cultivated 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."
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. Rubio said the war in Ukraine "cannot end militarily", and predicted "it will end at the negotiating table", reflecting Trump's previous position.
In Alaska, 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 Putin for a ceasefire, declaring that a full peace accord would be more permanent.
With Rubio, 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, Trump dispensed with that strategy.
Clearly frustrated with Putin, who embarrassed him by never executing on the peace negotiations that Trump insisted they had agreed upon, 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 capitalisation. "This is not distinguishing Russia."
New York Times News Service