In February, President Donald Trump brusquely told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “You don’t have the cards” to defeat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This week, he staked out a brand-new view of the conflict on Tuesday, declaring on Truth Social that Russia is a “paper tiger” and claiming that Ukraine has “great spirit” and “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form” with the support of NATO.
Trump’s startling new pivot caught both Moscow and Kyiv by surprise and prompted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to fire back on Wednesday: “Russia is more compared with a bear. There are no paper bears,” he told a Russian radio station. In fact, it’s not just Russia and Ukraine who were caught unawares. Nobody really knows what this means.
Trump has sent mixed signals about his position on the war throughout his second term. At times he has publicly scolded Zelenskyy for being too determined to continue fighting. Other times, he has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, such as when he called him “absolutely crazy” after a particularly heavy bombardment of Ukrainian cities. In just the span of a month this summer, Trump greenlit a new batch of arms sales to NATO for deployment in Ukraine while threatening sanctions against Russia — and then subsequently rolled out the red carpet for Putin at a summit in Alaska during which, according to Trump, they had a “warm” conversation and agreed on the point of Ukraine’s giving up land to Russia.
It’s increasingly difficult to suss out where Trump fundamentally stands on the Ukraine war or predict what he’ll say or do next. But if Trump thinks he’s slyly pressuring Russia or Ukraine to accept a peace deal through his seeming incoherence, he’s wrong. He’s most likely achieving the opposite.
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