Trump's Views On Russia-Ukraine War Are Shifting

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Wow, I hope he wasn't disappointed.

It sounds like he's one of the few that came here and wants to come back.

Yeah, the weather's been all over the place, but I'm glad you had a good time.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Ashley Lopez.

I cover politics.

I'm Greg Myri.

I cover national security.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And today, our focus is on the United States' role in the war in Ukraine.

Greg, so Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine started more than three years ago.

The U.S.

has been supporting Ukraine with weapons since the very start of that.

Can you catch us up on where this war is now and how involved the U.S.

is at this point?

Yeah, Ashley, today is a really good typical example.

Russia fired about 400 drones and 18 missiles into Ukraine, many of them at the capital Kyiv.

Russian troops are hundreds of miles away from Kiev.

There's no way they're going to get to the city or take it.

So most of these missiles and drones are at civilian targets.

It seems like it's really an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine and sap the morale of civilians.

And many of these civilians are sleeping in their basements or in the subways during these attacks.

that last most of the night or all of the night.

Now, there's also the front line, which stretches for hundreds of miles.

Russia does have the upper hand.

It is advancing, but very slowly and at a very high cost.

So Russia is bigger.

It has more resources, troops, and firepower.

Ukraine is hanging on, but there's real uncertainty for Ukraine about how it will keep getting weapons.

So Greg, how would you describe U.S.

policy towards Ukraine right now?

Because Trump has been on again, off again, feeling bad about Zelensky, good about Zelensky, bad about Putin, not so bad about Putin.

So where do things stand, and how much more military support does Ukraine need from the U.S.

to survive?

Well, Mara, Ukraine needs a lot of support.

It needs to be ongoing.

And it's just not clear where it's coming from right now with all this uncertainty coming out of the Trump administration.

That big package that the Biden administration approved last year is running out.

It was already running low.

And then the Pentagon announced it was pausing some weapons to Ukraine as part of a worldwide review of foreign military aid.

And then Trump has stepped into the fray and say, no, he's not pausing support, but the president and his administration are just not offering a clear explanation of what happened or what they might be doing next.

Now, Trump is sounding more consistently critical of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

He's said this week that he's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless, that Putin is not treating human beings in the right way.

And he's even used a bad word or two.

But

so from a U.S.

perspective, it sounds like Trump is changing his tune a little bit.

But imagine how this probably sounds to Vladimir Putin.

He has not accepted Trump's proposed ceasefire.

He's not offered any concessions and is still making all these hardline demands.

And he's greatly escalated the air war since Trump came into office.

So he seems to be testing Trump in all these ways.

And Trump sounds a little more critical, but he hasn't committed any concrete actions.

So from his perspective, the Trump administration just seems very, very soft on Russia.

That makes me wonder what the role of Congress could be here.

Like, how much support is there among members of Congress to do more?

I mean, things like maybe sanctions on Russia or giving Ukraine more air defense.

Well, there is a lot of support among Congress, much more so it seems, than the administration.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, he's been pushing a sanctions bill.

He says there's more than 80 senators.

So obviously this has strong bipartisan support.

And this would sanction countries buying Russian oil.

China, India would certainly be included in that group.

But it's not, even if this passed, Trump says he's thinking about it now.

Again, some movement, but no real commitment.

But that's a long-term thing.

It would hurt Russia's economy, but it's not the kind of thing you would expect to change behavior overnight.

The one thing we're not hearing is any real push in Congress or the administration for a new weapons package.

Ukraine is making more and more of its own weapons and in particular it's doing very well in making its own drones that are quite effective.

Europe says it's going to do more and it is.

But there's still a lot of systems and particularly air defenses that these are U.S.

systems and you need U.S.

missiles to go with them and there's not really an alternative for Ukraine.

Mara, how do you think President Trump views Ukraine?

Well, I think he's been all over the map on this, but there has been a through line.

He has been very favorable towards Putin.

He often has parroted Kremlin talking points.

He has not disguised his dislike for Zelensky.

He has blamed Zelensky.

He's called him a dictator.

He's blamed him for the war.

His animus towards Ukraine goes all the way back to the first term.

When he pressured Zelensky to open an investigation of Joe Biden.

Zelensky didn't do that.

Trump was pretty angry at him.

And in that pressure campaign led to Trump's first impeachment.

So in general, he's been seen as somebody who's favorable to Putin for a variety of reasons.

But lately, things seem to have changed a bit.

He's gotten frustrated and impatient with Putin.

He's had some pretty good phone calls with Zelensky.

Zelensky's been happy about the conversations they've had about U.S.

military support for Ukraine.

So I think with almost everything Trump, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

He changes his views and opinions pretty fast.

There doesn't seem to be a through line of geopolitical strategy to any of this.

Yeah.

I mean, Amara, whether or not like geopolitics is sort of the calculus here, like we can definitely say that Trump does have MAGA in mind.

I mean, how do you think his supporters feel looking at this news and seeing you know, possible continued U.S.

involvement in Ukraine's war?

Well, I think the Republican coalition is split on this.

In terms of the MAGA base, there is both a big isolationist trend in the MAGA base.

There are people like Tucker Carlson and people like Steve Bannon who think we have no business doing anything in Ukraine.

There also is a strain of MAGA that sees Vladimir Putin as simpatico, that he is a supporter of cultural conservative stands.

But I think in general, the MAGA base follows President Trump.

You saw this right before the Iran attacks.

A lot of parts of the MAGA base didn't like the idea of President Trump getting involved in the Middle East, but he did it and they quieted down.

So I think in the end, he has a pretty free hand here in terms of his base.

They're not going to revolt against him, but there's no doubt that one of the most important things he ran on was that he was going to keep the United States out of forever foreign wars.

And maybe now that's just being defined as so long as they're not U.S.

boots on the ground, we're not involved.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, we're going to take a quick break.

More in a moment

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And we're back.

And I wonder what you both think of this.

So during the campaign, then candidate Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration, which is very similar to what he said about the ongoing war in the Middle East.

I mean, would it be fair to compare Trump's attitude toward Ukraine to his attitude toward the war between Israel and Hamas and Gaza?

Well, I think it's fair up to a certain point.

Both of these things were things that Trump said would be easy-peasy to resolve.

And they both turned out to be much, much harder.

And he has touted himself as a great deal maker.

And he hasn't been able to make a deal to stop the war in Ukraine or in Gaza.

And he's actually expressed frustration on this, about both of these conflicts.

So I do think this has been, you know, a real lesson in real-world geopolitics where you can't just bluff and bluster your way to something that you call a deal.

Yeah, and I think Trump never really expresses an appreciation for the long, tortured history in both of these places.

I've reported from both of them pretty regularly the past few years.

And whenever you start a conversation with anybody, whether it's an Israeli, a Palestinian, or somebody in Ukraine, they talk about this generational trauma of

what they've gone through, what their parents have gone through, what their grandparents have gone through.

One relationship between the leaders or one phone call or one weekend meeting is not going to sort them out.

Getting to a ceasefire, stopping the shooting, that would be a big important achievement.

But then beyond that, you have multiple steps to try to get to some sort of lasting, enduring peace and resolve these conflicts in a permanent way.

Yeah.

And what we haven't heard from Trump, for instance, is, does he believe that Ukraine should be a sovereign state and decide for itself whether it wants to be allied with Russia or Europe?

He doesn't seem to have a kind of geopolitical understanding or strategy for either of these conflicts.

And as Greg said, these are not just two schoolyard kids fighting on a playground.

Sometimes Trump has actually used that metaphor.

These are people with deep, long-standing grievances and national goals.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, what will you both be watching for as things continue, Greg?

Yeah, I still keep a pretty close watch on the daily scale of these Russian air attacks.

For much of the war, a typical night might be a case where Russia fires several dozen drones and missiles, and that'd be pretty substantial.

Beginning of this year, we saw those numbers go up to maybe 100 a night.

Now we're seeing three, four, five hundred a night.

A couple nights ago Russia fired more than 700 drones into Ukraine overnight.

This kept people in cities up all night long.

Now you know is that something Russian can sustain and shows that they're really not interested in finding a ceasefire but are trying to overwhelm Ukraine.

And also keep an eye on the frontline fighting because it is the summer fighting season.

It's warm.

You can move around pretty easily.

It's dry there.

Much harder to move around and fight in the winter.

So I'll be looking at both of those things, plus, how is Ukraine going to keep getting weapons?

It is running low.

It's going to need to be resupplied from the U.S.

And if not from the U.S., it's really not clear where they're going to get them.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm looking for.

Does the President ask Congress to approve the money for more military aid to Ukraine?

As Greg said earlier, the Biden-approved military aid is running out probably by the end of the summer, and that really matters.

Also, whether the president agrees and gives Lindsey Graham the go-ahead to push the bill to increase sanctions on Russia.

Yeah, lots of open questions.

All right, well, let's leave it there for today.

I'm Ashley Lopez, I cover politics.

I'm Greg Myri, I cover national security.

And I'm Mara Lyasson, Senior National Political Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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