{"id":1081374,"date":"2026-07-10T21:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1081374\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T21:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:37:22","slug":"russia-ukraine-is-trump-turning-against-vladimir-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1081374\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Ukraine: Is Trump turning against Vladimir Putin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can\u00a0sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get it in your inbox every day.<\/p>\n

Meetings with Donald Trump haven\u2019t always gone well for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In a 2019 phone call, Trump unsuccessfully pressured Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden. In a 2025 Oval Office ambush, Trump accused Zelensky of being insufficiently grateful<\/a> for U.S. help after Russia invaded. So it\u2019s notable that during this week\u2019s NATO summit, Trump and Zelensky largely got along. Their ability to meet cordially isn\u2019t just about manners; it\u2019s a metric of Trump\u2019s support for Ukraine and, more broadly, for the Western-led world order of which NATO is a big part. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n

What did Trump say at this meeting that was good news for Ukraine?<\/strong>
At NATO\u2019s annual summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, Trump said he would let Ukraine manufacture Patriot defense systems, sophisticated U.S. mobile batteries that can shoot down enemy ballistic missiles. \u201cThat\u2019s really cool, right?\u201d Trump said, with Zelensky beside him.<\/p>\n

How will that help Ukraine?<\/strong>
In two related ways. Russia has stepped up ballistic missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, which are running low on Patriot interceptors. Russia launched those barrages in response to Ukrainian drone attacks on weapons factories, fuel depots, and oil refineries as far away as Siberia<\/a>. Those Ukrainian attacks, which Trump also praised Wednesday, have created fuel and power shortages that are angering Russian civilians normally isolated from the war\u2019s impacts<\/a>. Letting Ukraine make Patriots could help it continue those strikes and defend against counterattacks, upping the pressure on Vladimir Putin to sue for peace.<\/p>\n

How quickly will Ukraine get the Patriots it needs?\u00a0<\/strong>
It could be a while. Patriots are complicated; as the New York Times has reported, Japan and Germany took years<\/a> to actually make any after getting licensed. Ukraine technically doesn\u2019t even have its license yet, a process that involves the defense contractors that produce Patriots. And given Trump\u2019s mercurial nature, some Ukrainians are skeptical he\u2019ll deliver.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I seem to recall Trump being pretty hostile to Ukraine and cozy with Russia. Has he done a 180?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not exactly. He has accused Ukraine of provoking Russia\u2019s invasion, pressured it to surrender territory, and temporarily froze U.S. military aid to the country last year. He gabbed on the phone with Putin for nearly 90 minutes<\/a> last week and reiterated that the Russian leader wants peace, despite little evidence of that. But Trump also loves a winner, and Ukraine has lately been looking more like one.<\/p>\n

How so?<\/strong>
Since Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion, the conflict has settled into a grinding war of attrition, with both sides deeply dug in. But Ukraine has pioneered innovations that are tilting the playing field. Besides those long-range strikes into Russia, Ukrainian drones have taken out Russian ships, killed and injured more Russian troops, and helped retake captured territory. Trump isn\u2019t the only Western leader who has noticed. NATO this week promised billions more in military aid to Ukraine, and last month the G7\u2014which includes Canada and Japan\u2014pledged additional economic sanctions on Russia. Ukraine is still far from restoring its preinvasion borders, a task that may prove impossible. But in its goal of making Putin\u2019s invasion too costly to sustain, Ukraine appears to be making progress.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Tolga Akdo\u011fan<\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019re up to speed, it\u2019s time to transition to the weekend! As a sendoff into your Friday night, might we recommend:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A news quiz that will satisfy your competitive streak:<\/strong> See if you can beat a Slate senior producer\u2019s score<\/a>\u2014or mine! I got 451, a score fit for Ray Bradbury.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n <\/p>\n

    Todd Blanche Has Already Flunked His Confirmation Hearing
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n

  2. \n <\/p>\n

    I Never Stopped Thinking About Graham Platner\u2019s Tattoo. This Week, I Realized Why.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A pair of heartwarming World Cup reflections:<\/strong> Soccer stirs up all sorts of emotions for fans. For Jeremy Stahl, whose family is French and Moroccan, Thursday\u2019s quarterfinal game between his two ancestral countries was a special blend of pain and pleasure<\/a>. Meanwhile, Luke Winkie talked with several newly minted fans who never cared about the sport\u2014until they discovered Norway\u2019s delightfully dorky star player Erling Haaland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    A conversation about the deeper questions behind a wedding budget:<\/strong> We\u2019re still thinking about Taylor Swift\u2019s Madison Square Garden nuptials<\/a>! Weddings are spectacles, and a couple\u2019s budget can say a lot about what matters to them. Back in 2023, Slate\u2019s Anna Sale spoke to couples with vastly different attitudes about how much to spend. In this week\u2019s episode of Death, Sex & Money, she checked back in with some of them<\/a> to see how things have changed.<\/p>\n

    The case for a lazy Sunday:<\/strong> Got weekend plans? If not, I have a simple solution: Just hang out! As Dan Kois illustrates in this ode to kicking back with friends, spending unstructured time together is a blessedly simple cure to the ills of modern life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Congrats on making it through another busy week of news. See you Monday!<\/strong><\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can\u00a0sign up here\u00a0to get it in your inbox every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1081375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7655],"tags":[32,295936,332,17966,657,333],"class_list":["post-1081374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-russia","tag-donald-trump","tag-newsletter-exclusive","tag-russia","tag-slate-plus","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116897844129944507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}