In the last 48 hours, US President Donald Trump may have uttered his most blunt words so far about Ukraine’s weaponry.
And, in the same period, the Kremlin gave the nomination more forceful to the White House that he is not interested in a realistic and negotiated solution for the war.
Starting with Trump’s comments about Ukraine’s weaponry, a return to a fundamental pillar of US foreign policy for decades – opposition to Russian aggression. “We will send more weapons,” said the president on Monday (7).
“We have to do that – they need to be able to defend themselves. They are being hard hit.”
Behind him, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsethhe nodded, despite this contradiction with the government’s announcement days earlier about the interruption of military equipment. What did Trump really mean? He didn’t give much detail.
Joint aerial defense
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A Pentagon spokesman later said that “under the direction of President Trump, the Defense Department is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine.
The goal, according to the Department of Defense, would be to ensure that Ukrainians can defend themselves while efforts continue to ensure lasting peace in Eastern Europe.
The turnaround occurred days after the connection of Volodymyr Zelensky com Trump Last Friday (4), in which the Ukrainian leader said the two leaders talked about joint arms production and air defense.
Zelensky urgently needs more Patriot interceptor missiles, which are the only way to overthrow Russian ballistic missiles and whose marketing can only be authorized by the US.
Trump talked a day earlier with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who offered to buy US patriots to provide Ukraine. There is a lot of something happening to take Zelensky to declare on Saturday that his connection with the American leader was “the best conversation we had all this time, the most productive.”
US relationship with Russia
Trump’s omission in providing details can be strategic or a byproduct of his occasional disdain for them. But while he may sound briefly a little more like his predecessor, Joe Biden, in terms of Ukraine weapons, here lies a glaring difference.
Biden publicly announced, with agonizing details, every capacity he gave Kiev, perhaps expecting transparency to avoid a sudden and unexpected climbing with Moscow.
Instead, Biden ended up having a distressing public debate with Kiev about each new system and remittance of weapons, during which all apparently impossible demands-from Himars rockets to tanks, F-16 fighters and attacks within Russia by Atacms-were finally attended.
The clear and open staircase of the American climb was exposed to Kremlin. Trump might try to avoid this by talking less.
But after only six months in office, Trump is back to the point where Biden has always been, after trying almost everything-approaching and criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, disagreeing and making up with Zelensky, and rejecting him before finally supporting Europe.
But the moment of his last conversion, as long as it was, reveals the desperation of this moment in the conflict.
The latest and record Russian drone use to attack Kiev exposed possibly critical deficiencies in the capital’s air defenses. They would only have worsened without refueling, at a time when Ukraine reports that 160,000 Russian soldiers are focusing north and east of the front lines.
The coming months will be unpredictable and Critics for kyiveven with the renewed US military support.
Change of positioning
Trump’s turnaround may have prevented panic from approaching the risk of collapse. Why the change?
Trump has always tried to be kind to Putin. Patient diplomacy, kind words and even the brief break in last week’s military aid – a Kremlin requirement for an agreement – have done nothing to change Putin’s position.
Kremlin doesn’t want peace. And so Trump learned slowly, rejecting the difficulties of recent history that Russia is an opponent.
Russia does not give up objectives in Ukraine
Meanwhile, after six months playing with the ideas of diplomacy, Kremlin is also back to the starting point: willing to accept peace only if she is a surrender under another name.
Its recent goal was achieved: it flattered the White House belief that it could negotiate the end of the war and took enough time in the negotiations so that Russia’s summer offensive is now properly equipped, and the terrain under these troops is firm.
Still on Monday (7), Putin’s main diplomat repeated the set of more maximalist demands in Russia.
Sergey Lavrov told a Hungarian newspaper that the “underlying causes” of war needs to be eliminated and presented an extensive and extensive list of impossible, including the “demilitarization and disinalization of Ukraine, the survey of sanctions to Russia, the annulment of all processes against Russia and the return of illegally seized Western assets.”
He added to this the requirement that Ukraine would commit to never join NATO and also that the busy Ukrainian territory was recognized as Russian, including parts of Zaporizehzia and Kherson that Moscow had not even taken.
It was a dizzying echo of Russia’s demands when he was first involved in diplomacy in Istanbul, in the first weeks of the war, when his soldiers killed civilians in the suburbs of Kiev.
Russian narrative
Putin’s justification for rejecting real diplomacy is simple. He sold this war (falsely) as an existential shock between Russia and its traditional values and a liberal, expansionist and aggressive NATO.
It is a binary moment in Russian history, insists its narrative. Considering a short, though misleading ceasefire, in the terms of Americans would contradict the urgency of this false history and risk undermining the precarious moral of their troops, whose lives their commanders often waste on brutal front attacks.
Putin can appease Trump with speeches about his desire for peace. But he cannot let the facade that the homeland is under attack.
Its removal back to normal has been shorter and easier than Trump’s. But still Kremlin sees the enemy where he has always been, and where he always needs to be, so that his war of choice will continue to end the lives of so many Russians early.
And so, for a brief moment, Putin and Trump meet back to the point where Russia and the US were in 2022.
Moscow would have brought together tens of thousands of additional soldiers to invade Ukraine once again. Diplomacy seems useless. Washington needs to help defend Ukraine or risk global embarrassment – the end of its military hegemony. And Ukraine remains there, in the middle, watching the two powers on both sides hesitates and spin, but still stay firm.
