Donald Trump's social media post on Tuesday, in which he said that Ukraine can win back all of the territory won by Russia in the war, shocked and delighted Ukraine and its European allies.
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, 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,” he said on Truth Social.
It's unclear exactly what Trump means. Does he mean all of Russia's territorial gains since this current iteration of the fighting began? Does he mean Russia's gains since the shooting war began in 2014, including the loss of Crimea?
Trump is not changing U.S. policy. He's changing the rhetoric and putting Russian President Vladimir Putin on notice that he was not going to abandon Ukraine.
But Trump is not proposing any additional U.S. arms sales to Ukraine. Instead, he will sell NATO additional arms that they can then pass on to Ukraine if they have a mind to do so.
The Truth Social post continued, “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. Why not? 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 does not distinguish Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Trump “clearly understands the situation and is well informed about all aspects of this war. We greatly value his decisiveness to help end this war.” He called Trump a “game changer.”
Trump has waxed hot and cold on helping Ukraine defend itself from Russia's aggression. As recently as August, he pushed the realistic idea that Ukraine will have to give up some of its land if it wants peace.
But after a fruitless summit with Putin in Alaska and the Russian incursions into Poland, Trump decided to turn up the heat on Russia. Perhaps he thought Putin was trying to play him on the peace negotiations.
Trump also went after the Europeans who continue to buy Russian oil and gas, thus financing Putin's war with badly needed hard currency.
Russia wasn’t the only country to face Trump’s ire, however. The U.S. president also rebuked allies in Europe who militarily back Ukraine, for continuing to import Russian energy as the war drags on. “Think of it, they’re funding the war against themselves,” Trump said. “Who the hell ever heard of that one?”
It wasn’t clear from Trump’s post whether he thought Ukraine could also take back Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The latest signal from Trump comes after a wave of Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace that some alliance leaders said risks pushing Russia and Western allies closer to armed conflict.
If Putin thought Trump would still be willing to push for a "land for peace" deal with Ukraine after the provocative drone incursions, he badly miscalculated. When asked if he thinks NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft in their airspace, Trump said, “Yes, I do.”
So what does Trump mean when he says Kyiv can recover "all of Ukraine back in its original form"?
"The only way Kyiv could recover territory would be if the United States went to war with Russia — something Donald Trump has no intention of doing," writes former war correspondent Anatol Lieven in UnHerd. Lieven is now director of a foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C.
He even suggested that Ukraine could gain additional land: “who knows, maybe [it can] even go further than that”, adding that Russia is in “BIG” economic trouble and now was “the time for Ukraine to act”.
If this remark was a considered statement by Trump, and not just impulsive bloviation, then one might almost think that it was an encouragement to Ukraine to commit suicide and get it over with. For if there is one thing that this war has demonstrated, it is the tremendous advantages that contemporary weaponry gives to the defensive. This approach has successfully stopped a Russian breakthrough, but it also helped Moscow blunt Ukraine’s 2023 offensive. As a result, the quickest route to a catastrophic Ukrainian defeat would be for Kyiv to exhaust its troops and materiel in another large-scale attack; yet, without such an offensive there is no realistic prospect of recovering lost territory.
Indeed, the bottom line is that Ukraine is already scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits to send into the meat grinder in Donetsk. Not only that, but desertions and draft dodging are causing critical shortages in troops. Many of those still fighting have been on the front line since the war began in February 2022.
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Perhaps Putin continues to fight because he sees these weaknesses and believes that eventually, Russian troops will either make a big breakthrough or Ukraine will sue for peace. Neither prospect is likely. Russia is suffering massive casualties and has its own problems with conscription and desertions.
Trump intended to try to shock Putin into coming to the table. We'll see how that works out.
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