President Trump’s statement on Ukraine and Russia on Truth Social has generated a massive amount of commentary. His statement came after a meeting on the sidelines at the UN with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky went to the UN and spoke with President Trump trying to gin up support for many more billions in economic and military aid. If that is what he aimed at, he failed.
Before the Truth Social declaration, Trump had urged Zelensky to make a deal with Russia, specifically Vladimir Putin. Zelensky refused. Instead, he and his team first told retired General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special emissary to Ukraine, that Ukraine was winning the war and would retake all lost territory. Zelensky also claimed that his drone attacks on Russia have ruined the Russian economy and sooner or later would force Russia to leave Ukraine.
Trump did the easy thing: he agreed with Zelensky, blasted Russia and Putin, said Russia was a paper tiger and that its economy would soon collapse.
But at the same time Trump continued to offload the Ukraine mess on Europe and “NATO” as if the US was not a NATO member.
Some in Europe smell a rat, and well they should. By agreeing with Zelensky that Ukraine can win the war, Trump is leaving the war to Zelensky and Europe. The US has mostly opted out.
However, there is more than one rat at work.
US policy, in the big picture, has backfired by driving Russia more and more into China’s arms, meaning that any possible reconciliation with Russia to balance China is, right now, off the table.
Trump had hoped to move the Russians on permitting a ceasefire in Ukraine by floating numerous offers of economic cooperation. In parallel to preparation for the Alaska summit, Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev (who heads Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund) held a series of discussions in Saudi Arabia, Washington and St. Petersburg where the two sides apparently discussed various economic incentives including renewal of US investments in sensitive sectors such as rare earths, cooperation in the Arctic where US and Russian interests potentially conflict, US sanctions, and normalization of diplomatic and business relations.
Despite the positive talk on economic cooperation, Putin was not persuaded it was enough to stall the war with a ceasefire, and in fact he may not have been in full control of the military situation. Before, during and after the Alaska Summit, the Russian military kept up heavy attacks on Ukraine, and Ukraine launched drone attacks on Russia.
Trump claims that Russia is a paper tiger and that a Real Military Power (Trump’s capitalization) would have won the war in a week. His statement has stung the Russian leadership, which is less than happy with the performance of its army, and worried about the fallout of more casualties and more disruptions in Russian towns and cities.
The Russian army is tactically and operationally far better than it was during the first year of the war where Russian armor took massive losses and the Russian incursion mostly failed. Ukraine’s army has proven capable of sustaining heavy losses and holding off Russian advances for the most part. It has shown brilliance in the use of drones, and it was gifted significant quantities of western weapons, some of them better than what Russia has. The Russian strategy, such as it is, appears aimed at squaring up its control over territory in Donbas and Zaphorize, while at the same time costing Ukraine significant casualties. This “process” if it can be called that, cannot end the war in Russia’s favor and, so far at least, cannot break Ukraine’s army. While the Russian operation cannot be called “aimless” as Trump suggests, the Russian military seems stuck in a cauldron of its own making.
Many experts (on both sides of the issue) will dispute the above analysis. But Trump makes a valid point: Russia can’t sustain the war and its economic and human costs indefinitely, unless the paradigm changes.
The other side of the coin is sustaining Ukraine which means more and more equipment and money. Chancellor Merz now wants to spend seized Russian assets on Ukraine, mostly because Germany no longer has funds for Ukraine (or much of anything, as the German economy itself is on the brink of disaster). He may persuade his Euro-partners to go along and spend Russia’s illegally seized money, which Russia may regard as an act of war. Europeans think the Russians are coming, so they may be promoting by spending Russian money a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ironically, the story put out by Zelensky on winning the war and the imminent collapse of Russia which he meant to garner more support for Ukraine, failed with Trump and has left Europe in the lurch. The Europeans can keep beating the drum, but it is very dangerous, or tell Zelensky to do what Trump previously told him, to make a deal. Perhaps even the Russians are ready.
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