Since his infamous “You don’t have the cards” Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in late February, Trump had been telling the Ukrainian president he had no choice but to give up territory in return for a peace deal with Russia.
But after meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly late last month, Trump seemed to have an epiphany. While Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been advising Trump that the war was a stalemate that neither side could win, Zelensky was giving Trump an upbeat battlefield assessment. At the same time, U.S. intelligence suggested Russia’s economy was in far worse shape than Putin was letting on.
“The information he gets, which is really good, from the intelligence agencies kind of shows that Russia is not winning this war,” retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the special envoy for Ukraine, told Fox News after the U.N. meeting. “If they were winning this war, they would be in Kyiv, they’d be in Odesa, they’d be over the Dnieper River.”
Suddenly, Trump was calling Russia a “paper tiger” and suggesting Ukraine could actually win the war.
“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,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
Still, Trump seemed to have lost interest in further negotiations and was ready to step back and let the two sides fight it out.
“Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” he wrote in his Sept. 23 post, citing the long gas lines in Russia caused by Ukraine’s strategic targeting of oil refineries. “In any event, I wish both Countries well,” he said, striking a tone of neutrality. “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
The next day, in a pull-aside with French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump at long last admitted that negotiating with Putin to end the war turned out to be a massive waste of time.
“I thought that would be the easiest one because of my relationship with Putin,” Trump lamented, “but unfortunately, that relationship didn’t mean anything.”
Now, flush with the success of his Gaza triumph, Trump seems reinvigorated to try to add Ukraine to his portfolio of “solved” wars, sensing that despite Putin’s bravado, Russia is on its back foot.
“They have long lines waiting for gasoline in Russia right now, right? They have long lines,” Trump said. “Who thought that was going to happen? And all of a sudden, his economy’s going to collapse. Who would think that Ukraine could have fought Russia for four years to essentially a standstill?”
And Trump apparently believes that his relationship with Putin, which he said meant nothing, is still worth something.
“Look, I’m very disappointed ’cause Vladimir and I had a very good relationship, probably still do,” Trump said recently. “I don’t know why he continues with this war. This war has been so bad for him. He’s lost a million and a half soldiers, probably close, certainly in terms of wounded and no legs and no arms and all of the things that happen in horrible wars.”
Ukraine’s request for Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 miles, has given Trump a new pressure point to use on Putin. Despite downplaying the effect the missiles would have on the battlefield, Putin clearly fears the weapon would be able to take out key targets in and around Moscow, and even deeper into Russia.
“Regarding the Tomahawks, this is a very powerful weapon,” Putin said at a forum in Moscow earlier this month, insisting they would have to be operated by U.S. troops. “This would signal the advent of a totally new stage in this escalation, including in terms of Russia’s relations with the United States.”
“The Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, very offensive weapon,” Trump said when discussing his consideration of Ukraine’s request with reporters on Air Force One. “In all fairness. I told that to President Zelensky because Tomahawks are a new step of aggression.”
But Trump seemed more enamored with the idea that the threat of sending Tomahawks might be just the incentive needed to push Putin to the peace table.
“Do they want to have Tomahawks going in their direction? I don’t think so,” Trump said. “I think I might speak to Russia about that. I might tell them that if the war is not settled, that we may very well do [it.] We may not, but we may do it. I think it’s appropriate to bring up. I want to see the war settled.”
Any deployment of Tomahawks would likely take months, given that they are generally fired from warships, and land-based launchers are in short supply.
At the latest meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal approached the topic gingerly, saying Ukraine desperately needs “long-range missiles, the name of these missiles everyone knows.”
“Their No. 1 target will be the Yelabuga manufacturing center for the Shahed missiles,” retired Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of the Army, said on Fox, where he is a senior military analyst. “Twenty thousand North Koreans are there at that manufacturing center. It’s out of the range of everything they have right now.”
It’s also where Russia is churning out Iranian-designed Shahed drones by the hundreds, which rain death and destruction on Ukrainian cities daily.
**UKRAINE HOPES TO BENEFIT FROM TRUMP’S GAZA MOMENTUM WITH ITS OWN PEACE**
At the Contact Group meeting at NATO’s headquarters, War Secretary Pete Hegseth underscored Trump’s Tomahawk threat with a pointed warning.
“If this war does not end, if there is no path to peace in the short term, then the United States, along with our allies, will take the steps necessary to impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression,” Hegseth said. “If we must take this step, the U.S. War Department stands ready to do our part in ways that only the United States can do.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/premium/3853287/gaza-triumph-rekindles-trump-interest-ukraine-peace/
