The relationship between the United States and Ukraine has reached a pivotal moment, exactly three years after Russian forces invaded its borders with the intent of overthrowing the government and annexing the territory.

Russia’s military was expected to quickly advance through the country until it overtook the capital when it invaded on Feb. 22, 2022, though it was met with a Ukrainian resistance that surprised the world. Since then, Ukraine’s military has effectively forced a stalemate in which Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory in the eastern and southern parts of the country, but the front lines have largely stagnated.

While former President Joe Biden and his administration repeatedly said they would support Ukraine’s resistance as long as it took, President Donald Trump’s priority is ending the war, stressing the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine.

While Biden wanted to support Ukraine to the maximum extent possible without incurring a wider conflict, the Trump administration’s priority is to end the war, and that could mean pushing Ukraine to accept a deal less favorable to themselves.

The Biden administration was “very supportive” on “a political and diplomatic level and militarily,” Marc Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner, adding that they also “supported Ukraine’s goals, which were quite maximalist.”

He added: “The Trump administration does not support those goals.”

Ukrainian and U.S. officials have exchanged jabs toward one another this week as the Trump administration began its push to end the war, which the president first announced last week after holding calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Since the president’s separate calls, Vice President JD Vance met with Zelensky in Munich, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with the Ukrainian leader in Kyiv, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attended the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting; and Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Russian leaders in Saudi Arabia earlier this week.

Zelensky expressed frustration with being excluded from that meeting in Riyadh, though Trump has responded by saying he isn’t “very important” to negotiations.

“I’ve had very good talks with Putin, and I’ve had not such good talks with Ukraine. They don’t have any cards, but they play it tough. But we’re not going to let this continue,” Trump told a gathering of governors at the White House on Friday.

The administration also got frustrated with his refusal to accept a long-term proposal that would have the U.S. invest in Ukraine’s rare earth minerals that would ultimately net the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars as a return on the military aid the U.S. has provided to Ukraine over the last three years.

Waltz predicted on Friday that Zelensky would sign the minerals deal soon. Should that happen, it could repair the apparent damage to the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

“You should never have started it,” Trump said of Zelensky from the White House last Tuesday, and he also called Zelensky, not Putin, a dictator.

“Yes, Russia attacked, but there was no reason for him to attack,” the president said during a Fox News radio interview on Friday. “Every time I say, ‘Oh, it’s not Russia’s fault,’ I always get slammed by the fake news. But I’m telling you, Biden said the wrong things, Zelensky said the wrong things, and they got attacked, which was a bad thing to do, but Russia could have been talked out of it so easily.”

The initial remark and subsequent reversal from the president about responsibility for a war that has become the deadliest battle on European soil since World War II highlights the tension between Washington and Kyiv.

“Maybe it’s a negotiating tactic to try to get Zelensky to the table and get him to compromise on territory. But it’s worrisome because we supported Zelensky for three years; calling him the aggressor is really unfair and erroneous,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. 

Last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned that it was an “unrealistic” goal for Ukraine to try to claw back all of the territory Russia currently occupies, and said the U.S. does not support NATO membership for Ukraine as a part of the negotiations, both of which have been key goals of Zelensky’s. He later walked back the comment about NATO membership saying that Trump was the ultimate negotiator representing the United States.

The Trump administration has also taken a much more open posture toward Russia after the Biden administration partnered with NATO to try to isolate Moscow.

The two sides, after the meeting in Saudi Arabia, agreed to start the process of reopening embassies and diplomatic channels and the Trump administration has teased “incredible opportunities” that could be had if the Russian government agrees to end the war on terms the U.S. believes are “acceptable.”

“Should this conflict come to an acceptable end, the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians, geopolitically on issues of common interest, and frankly economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and will also improve our relations in the long term between these two important countries,” Rubio explained.

Witkoff went as far this week as to say that he and Putin began “developing a friendship” during his recent trip to Moscow where he was able to secure the release of Marc Fogel, an American declared wrongfully detained by the Russian government.

Kremlin officials are likely “guardedly optimistic,” with the rhetoric coming from Washington, Cancian added.

“They’re optimistic, of course, because Trump seems to be supporting many of the goals that they have in keeping Ukraine out of NATO, about labeling Ukraine as the aggressor, of not being willing to call Russia the aggressor. So all of that has them very excited and hopeful,” he said. “The reason I say they’re guarded is they recognize just how volatile Trump can be.”

Trump has repeatedly denounced the amount of death and destruction that has incurred during the war, without fully attributing the responsibility to the Russian military.

Russian troops have been accused of carrying out war crimes, including against civilians, and violating international humanitarian law.

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In March 2023, the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for Putin and Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, who they said were responsible for the forced deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Last year, the court issued arrest warrants for two senior Russian military leaders whom the court said bear criminal responsibility for directing attacks against civilian objects, causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects, and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts.