After campaigning on ending the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump had repeatedly stated any negotiations to end the war will likely include Ukraine ceding captured territory to Russia.
There has now been an about-face, a big one, that sounds like Trump now supports a military counter-offensive by Ukraine.
This week, President Trump stated that Ukraine, with help from NATO and the European Union, can retake all territory it has lost to Russia and restore Ukraine to its “original form.”
The war is taking a terrible toll on Russia, the U.S. president wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post Tuesday.
Likening Russia to a "paper tiger," Trump wrote that Russia is in “big economic trouble,” while morale and spirit remain strong for Ukraine.
Whether online comments become U.S. foreign policy remains to be seen. Either way they could affect Russia’s strategy on whether to more seriously negotiate for peace or to dig in.
The Russian president has ignored Trump’s efforts to bring peace to the region even after face-to-face talks in Alaska earlier this summer.
“I believe that Trump has come to a conclusion that there’s no trust at all with Vladimir Putin and that he’s been used by Putin for nefarious purposes. I think he feels somewhat embarrassed by Putin,” Bob Maginnis, a former U.S. army lieutenant colonel, told AFN.
Mark Montgomery, a former rear admiral and now a senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, agrees.
“President Trump was disrespected by President Putin. After every meeting, Putin would go back to Russia and would immediately engage in significant cruise missile, hypersonic missile strikes on civilian personnel in Ukraine, and as well as engaging in military kinetic actions along the front line, ignoring the president's request for Vladimir to stop, ignoring the president's request to come to the negotiating table,” Montgomery told Washington Watch host Tony Perkins Wednesday.
Trump has also grown irritated with NATO. He has repeatedly argued that European NATO members should increase their defense spending significantly, and take more responsibility for Ukraine aid, rather than leaving the U.S. carrying a disproportionate share.
“NATO continues to do less than it ought to do. It’s a shift, but one I’m not surprised about,” Maginnis said.
Destroying families and churches
Russia has not only fought against the Ukrainian military. It has targeted civilian populations and taken children from families with the goal of re-educating them and even training them to fight for Russia against Ukraine.
There are at least 210 facilities around Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine designated for this purpose with thousands of Ukrainian children affected, reports CBS News citing a study by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab.
Some Ukrainian kids help with production of military equipment; others receive combat and paratrooper training.
The Russian military has targeted civilian Christians, too.
“The abduction of 19,000-plus, maybe 20,000-plus Ukrainian children, their illegal adoption or their placing them in homes, then eventually in the military to fight against Ukrainians … this is completely unacceptable behavior.
“The destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the Russians … this is completely unacceptable behavior. It's, in fact, why President Putin has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for these crimes against children and against humanity in Ukraine,” Montgomery said.
More than 596 Ukrainian Christian churches across various denominations have been damaged or destroyed.
It is common practice for the Russian army to seize religious buildings and use them as military bases or to cover firing positions, which leads to even greater destruction of religious sites. There are many cases of Christian (including Protestant) and other churches in the occupied territories being confiscated and converted to administrative use, Orthodox Times reported as far back as early May.
According to preliminary data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Russian occupation forces are illegally holding more than 30 religious figures in captivity, Orthodox Times reported.
There is a claim by Ukrainian authorities and religious-freedom observers that Russia, in occupied territories, is trying not just to suppress specific churches, but to reduce religious diversity and assert the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), The Kyiv Independent reports. The suppression is often described as targeting Ukrainian spiritual identity.
Montgomery: Stop buying the oil and gas
The biggest part the Europeans could play in moving toward peace is to stop buying Russian oil and natural gas, Montgomery said. That’s what’s funding the war for Russia.
“That’s particularly Hungary, Slovakia and Turkey, but there are other countries as well,” Montgomery said.
There are certain number of European nations – the Baltic states – who aren’t getting their natural resources from Russia, Montgomery said. Unfortunately, these are smaller nations.
“We really need the Western Europeans -- Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, the U.K., to do their fair share,” Montgomery said.
How Putin responds remains to be seen, but he’s clearly facing heat at home, Montgomery said.
“He’s losing. He's lost 900,000 to a million people, including 250 to 300,000 dead. This is the lifeblood of a future Russia and in a failed campaign. So, he's got that pressure. He's going to have severe economic pressure soon that won't be able to pay for the war machine.”
