President Donald Trump this week shocked the international community when he said he flipped his position on the war in Ukraine and said he thinks Kyiv could re-take all of its occupied land seized by Russia.
In a Tuesday comment on social media, he said, “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back in its original form.”
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original borders from where this war started, is very much an option,” he added. “Why not?”
This position is a stark reversal from where he stood when he first re-entered office and, in an infamous February Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told him he “[didn’t] have the cards” to take on Russia, and repeatedly suggested Kyiv would need to make significant concessions to end the war.
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“We’re seeing that his approach to Russia’s war on Ukraine has already changed dramatically,” Yuriy Sak, former defense advisor to Zelenskyy, told Fox News Digital. “This change of his approach will hopefully translate into more unity in terms of the Western alliance and their support for Ukraine.”
The response to Trump’s change in attitude was met with mixed responses from top security experts, with some viewing it as a positive shift, while others, like former CIA Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman, argued that words alone will have little effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“For all the years I spent trying to see the world through the twisted KGB eyes of Vladimir Putin…he does not care about words,” Hoffman said. “He thinks he can use them against us.
“We did not deter him from threatening Poland, Estonia, Copenhagen and Norway militarily — the United States and NATO did not deter him. He did it,” Hoffman continued, referring to airspace violations in which Russia deployed drones and fighter jets over NATO nations in incidents that have occurred since Trump re-entered the White House.
“He’s trying to show that the United States doesn’t have the throw-weight to deter Russia from threatening NATO members in Eastern Europe,” the Russian security expert argued. “He wants to try to show Ukraine the United States doesn’t have the ability to project power in that part of the world. To show Ukraine ‘you don’t want to rely on the United States, stop fighting, we’re going to beat you anyways, we’re going to tap you out’ — that’s where his strategy is.”
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Russia on Wednesday pushed back on Trump’s comments and suggested he was “mistaken” in his assessment of how the war is progressing.
“The dynamics on the front lines speak for themselves,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters.
Russia has made few to no major advances on the front lines since early 2024. Though some small advances have been achieved this year, the front lines have remained largely frozen for the last 18 months.
Hoffman argued that if the U.S. wants to see Ukraine make advances, it needs to lift all strike restrictions it has in place and immediately enforce secondary sanctions, rather than wait on Europe to simultaneously follow suit, as they will take months to take a toll on Russia’s war chest.
Washington also should consider strong-arming NATO allies, including Germany to provide Ukraine with long-range strike missiles, and Denmark to close the Danish Strait to Russia’s shadow fleet, as well as get Trump allies, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, to stop buying Russian oil.
While Hoffman argued there is more to be done before Putin actually starts to re-evaluate his war operations in Ukraine, Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė said the president’s position reversal was “very encouraging.”
“I completely agree with the statement that, definitely, Ukraine has a right and a chance, with our full support, to go back to regain its original borders, its internationally recognized borders,” she told Fox News Digital. “Because why not?”
Sakaliene echoed Hoffman and said Ukraine needs the proper support to fully counter Russia, and without more U.S. and NATO support, not only will Ukraine be unable to make advances on the battlefield, Russia will continue to threaten NATO — increasing the risk of a massive international war.
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“The only obstacle would be our fear — our inability to defend the rules of the world that we live in,” she said. “The recent series of incidents, both drone related in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and also related to the incursion into our air space by Russian fighter jets, demonstrate again and again that Russia is coloring outside the lines.
“It’s going to continue [and] it’s going to escalate, because they feel that they are unpunishable, because they feel that they are untouchable, and that means that they are happily challenging NATO as well,” Sakaliene said.
All three security experts agreed that the U.S.’s role in countering Putin is “critical” and the argument that the U.S. should take a backseat to Europe weakens the united front necessary to stop Russia.
“The current world security architecture is built around the axis of the United States,” Sakaliene said, arguing that the system shouldn’t be exploited, but supported by Europe’s bolstering of its own military capabilities. “But that also means that the voice of the United States was and is still vital for certain decisions related to a security of a democratic world.”
“And that the United States’ voice is the one that Russia hears the loudest,” she said.
Trump on Tuesday suggested Ukraine should not only retake the land seized by Russia, but “maybe even go further than that.”
Sak pushed back on this and said Ukraine is viewing the situation through a “realistic” lens.
“We’ve never had the ambition to conquer Russian territory. We don’t need it,” Sak said. “We just want them out of our land.
“We understand that at this stage, even this objective is not possible to achieve through military means,” he continued. “It will have to be a mixture of diplomatic means, and it probably will take a long time.”
Ultimately, Ukraine viewed Trump’s comments not as a signal that the U.S. is going to take immediate action, but rather as a “confirmation” that Trump is now fully on board with backing Ukraine, and aligning itself with the NATO alliance.
“Standing shoulder to shoulder with the European partners of Ukraine…this alone represents a big threat to Russia,” Sak argued. “They know it, and this, once again, sends them a message that this is an unwinnable war for them.
“Sooner or later, when we cripple their economy in a combination of sanctions plus the deep strike drones that we carry out on a daily basis, Russia will be in a position that, despite their willingness to fight this war and continue to cause these crimes of aggression, it will not just be able to do so purely for economic reasons,” Sak added.
