{"id":258324,"date":"2025-07-12T07:17:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T07:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/258324\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T07:17:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T07:17:15","slug":"donald-trumps-frustration-with-vladimir-putin-prompts-shift-of-tone-on-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/258324\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump’s frustration with Vladimir Putin prompts shift of tone on Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump was on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday morning when he was asked about a Russian drone attack that hit a hospital in Ukraine overnight, injuring nine people. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll be seeing things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s comments highlighted how his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin for failing to budge in talks to end the war<\/a> he launched three years ago appears to have reached a tipping point. <\/p>\n

Over the past week, Trump has said he will be providing additional weapons<\/a>, including Patriot air defence systems, to Ukraine; signalled his willingness to embrace much tougher sanctions against Moscow; and blasted the Russian president. <\/p>\n

He also vowed to issue a \u201cmajor statement\u201d on the war in Ukraine this coming Monday, without elaborating. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin<\/a>,\u201d Trump vented on Tuesday. \u201cHe\u2019s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s ire represents a big shift in tone from the White House. The president spent the early months of his second term pinning the blame for the conflict on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including during an infamous, public dressing-down in the Oval Office in late February. <\/p>\n

Since then, Trump has become increasingly unhappy with Russia\u2019s intransigence in talks over a possible ceasefire that would pave the way for the longer-term settlement \u2014 a primary foreign policy goal for the US president. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the closest we have been to new financial measures or new pressure being put on Putin for this entire administration,\u201d said Kristine Berzina. managing director at the German Marshall Fund of the US. <\/p>\n

Yet while Trump\u2019s bluster against Putin will ease fears that the White House will completely abandon Ukraine, it may not represent a profound shift in Kyiv\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a shot across Russia and Putin\u2019s bow that he\u2019s sick of being strung along,\u201d said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t actually mean that the US is going to shift to being suddenly a big ally and backer of Ukraine, or more significantly than it has been.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said that during a meeting at last month\u2019s Nato summit, Zelenskyy said his \u201cfirst priority\u201d was securing help to defend Ukrainian cities from Russia\u2019s serial assault. Trump this week said the US would be sending additional Patriot systems to Nato allies for them to distribute to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be good news if the president follows through and ensures that he makes good on those statements,\u201d Shaheen said. <\/p>\n

In his evening address from Kyiv on Friday, Zelenskyy also suggested the geopolitical winds were shifting in Ukraine\u2019s favour. \u201cWe have received political signals at the highest level \u2014 good signals, particularly from the United States of America and from our European friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Kyiv would next week be discussing military co-operation with Trump\u2019s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg and expected \u201cstrong steps\u201d on sanctions as well. <\/p>\n

Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of Ukraine\u2019s 429th \u201cAchilles\u201d drone regiment, said Trump\u2019s changing rhetoric \u201cis good for us\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can see that tensions between Washington and Moscow are rising,\u201d Federenko said. <\/p>\n

But while Trump\u2019s rhetoric has raised some hopes in Europe of a potential shift in his attitude, two senior officials involved in defence and security\u00a0negotiations with Washington said there was still little tangible evidence of the White House taking a more pro-Kyiv stance.<\/p>\n

\"DamageDamage from a Russian air strike in a residential area of Kyiv \u00a9 Andrew Kravchenko\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Western allies of Ukraine were still assuming Trump was predisposed to seeing Putin as his main negotiating partner in any settlement and Zelenskyy as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal, the officials said. <\/p>\n

They added that while Patriots were critical to Ukraine\u2019s ability to better defend its troops and its cities, they would not change its ability to strike back against Russia nor shift the overall dynamic of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a little bit of overexcitement based on a shift in tone,\u201d said one of the officials. \u201cBut we\u2019re not seeing that translate into major actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council\u2019s Europe Center, said: \u201cI would say Trump\u2019s announcement is probably more a factor of his frustration with Putin, rather than his affection for Zelenskyy or his support for Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Ukrainian president has become more successful at managing Trump. Following the Oval Office confrontation, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron advised Zelenskyy on how to shift his approach to dealing with the US president by offering emphatic praise and always thanking Washington for its support, according to US, French and Ukrainian officials familiar with the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian president is still dealing with an administration in which scepticism about helping Kyiv runs deep \u2014 both from officials who believe the US needs to focus more on Asia rather than Europe, and others who are philosophically non-interventionist.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldTrump and Putin arrive for a meeting in Helsinki in 2018 \u00a9 Brendan Smialowsi\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have seen is a lack of consistency in this administration\u2019s approach to Ukraine, and what we need to do to support ending that conflict and pressuring Russia,\u201d Shaheen said. <\/p>\n

The administration is continuing to negotiate with Moscow. This week Marco Rubio, the secretary of the state, met Sergei Lavrov<\/a>, the Russian foreign minister, for talks in Malaysia. But there was no breakthrough. <\/p>\n

Rubio told reporters there had been a different \u201capproach\u201d from Russia but did not offer any details. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t characterise it as something that guarantees a peace.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"SmokeSmoke rises over Kyiv following mass Russian drones and missile strikes on Ukraine\u2019s capital on July 4 \u00a9 Oleksii Filoppov\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Russian foreign minister made it clear the Kremlin was not prepared to budge on any of Putin\u2019s maximalist demands, telling Rubio he \u201cconfirmed the position Putin has put out\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obvious from the first talks after inauguration that Putin wasn\u2019t interested in peace except on his terms. He thinks he can win the war,\u201d said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. <\/p>\n

\u201cPutin decided there\u2019s no point doing a deal with the US because western support for Ukraine is fracturing anyway. We\u2019ll have to see on the battlefield if he was right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump was on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday morning when he was asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-258324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114839044127680886","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258324","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=258324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}