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What Really Lies Behind Donald Trump’s Shifting Stance On Ukraine

Trump’s new threat to Putin doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on Ukraine’s side, argues George Llewelyn

US President Donald Trump seen at the White House on January 23, days into his second presidency. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy

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If there’s one thing the wider world has come to understand about Ukrainians over the last three years, it is that they have proved themselves to be deeply stoic people.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, a great deal of the reporting coming out of the Ukraine has demonstrated an incredible level of resilience from ordinary people in the face of extraordinary military aggression.

As the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion approaches, the grim resolve of Ukrainians to neither give in to, nor be cowed by, hundreds of long range attacks on population centres each week shows little sign of ebbing away.

A person removes possessions from a bombed house during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Synel / Alamy
A person removes possessions from a bombed house during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Synel / Alamy

In the last week alone dozens of civilians have been killed or injured in drone and missile strikes across the country, including four who were killed in an attack on a popular metro station in Kyiv. All the while, evidence of Russian war crimes, such as the video-taped execution of six prisoners of war on Thursday, continues to flood in.

Uncertainty is by this point an all too familiar facet to life in Ukraine. Nevertheless it has grown markedly since the reelection of Donald Trump last November.

While the government in Kyiv appears to be taking a potentially catastrophic power shift in the United States in stride, with Volodymyr Zelensky in particular seeming to adapt deftly to what will almost certainly be a vastly different relationship with Washington, Trump’s inauguration this week promises more uncertainty for ordinary Ukrainians.

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While reporting from Ukraine over the last eighteen months I have been continuously surprised by just how invested many Ukrainians have been in the minutiae of the Western news cycle, oftentimes seeming to know about micro-developments before many journalists returning from assignments in the east.

I have simply lost count of the number of times I have been asked by a Ukrainian about some minor detail in a New York Times article or BBC News report, or asked what I personally predict will happen next.

To a large degree it is a sign of how invested ordinary Ukrainians are in the bigger geopolitical picture, and their constant search for any crumb of information that might offer a modicum of certainty about their future.

Even in the last few days, the substance of Trump’s rhetoric on Russia has changed significantly.

Throughout his campaign, he made no qualms about ostensibly throwing Ukraine under the proverbial bus, reiterating time and again his promise to end the war in twenty four hours.

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to RusHydro Director General Viktor Khmarin during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, on July 22. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy
Russian President Vladimir Putin pictured during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy

It appeared at the time that he sought to achieve this via a decidedly chummy relationship with Vladimir Putin. Yet within twenty four hours of his inauguration, Trump was the most critical he has ever been of the Russian president, going so far as to describe his counterpart as “destroying Russia” with its war in Ukraine.

Two days later, on Wednesday, Trump threatened Russia with a new wave of significant sanctions, tariffs and taxes, offering Putin an ultimatum to end the war “the easy way or the hard way”.

In reality, there is no straightforward way to end the war in Ukraine. In the run up to Trump’s inauguration, the Kremlin has outright rejected the incoming president’s peace plan.

More recently, leaked reports of phone calls with the Kremlin and statements made by members of Trump’s cabinet indicate that this is a reality that has at least begun to dawn on the current administration.

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That Trump’s “24-hours” campaign claim seems to be ebbing away is a promising sign that this new administration will take seriously the real work of seeking a negotiated peace, but that still offers little concrete hope to Ukrainians, many of whom polled last month as preferring the EU and the UK to take the lead role as Ukraine’s negotiating partner.

Nor does it mean that Trump’s more hardline stance toward Russia indicates a much friendlier attitude towards Ukraine. After all, Trump’s self image is built on his being a dealmaker and it is not unlikely that this is simply a tactic to open talks with the Kremlin from a position of strength.

Regardless of Trump’s rhetoric, it is likely that any negotiated settlement will take time as both Ukraine and Russia’s red lines so far appear to be equally unacceptable to the other. While polling conducted by Gallup in November revealed that 52% of Ukrainians now favour a negotiated end to the war “as soon as possible”, only half of those respondents supported making territorial concessions as part of that settlement — meaning just a quarter of Ukrainians are willing to accept ceding territory as a price of peace. 

Having spent time along various stretches of the frontline in 2023 and 2024, it is not a difficult attitude to understand. Ultimately, ceding territory means ceding people. As of October 2024, there are more than three and a half million Internally Displaced Persons in Ukraine. Many have fled cities like Mariupol and Kherson and just as many have friends and family still living under or under the threat of occupation. 

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In the east and south of Ukraine, “frontline” is itself to an extent a misnomer. It is less a single line that can be drawn on a map, and more an ever changing series of patches of land.

In some regions soldiers engage in gun battles from hundreds of metres away while in others the fighting consists primarily of artillery and tank battles fought across entire swathes of land, sometimes as much as 30kms across.

When it comes to understanding what a frontline means for civilians, the situation becomes even more complex. For many in Donbas, these frontlines now separate free settlements from occupied ones, often dividing neighbourhoods, communities and families.

Just last year, as I was beginning a three day journey back to the UK from Ukraine, I shared a carriage on a train from Odesa to Lviv with a young woman from Kherson, Katya.

She had fled after the city was liberated and opened a cosmetics store in Odesa with her friend Nastya. She told me her parents are still living under occupation in a small village near Kakhovka, where a Russian sabotage attack destroyed the dam in summer of 2023 and caused catastrophic floods in more than forty villages.

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She wasn’t able to speak to them for a very long time, even after Kherson was liberated. To this day she has yet to see them again.

It Is perhaps too easy to look at a map of Ukraine, the newly occupied territory marked in red, and to consider the grinding advances Russian forces have been making in recent months and determine that territorial concessions must be made for any peace deal to be realistic.

But what of Katya and her parents, or the young people from Mariupol forging new lives in Kyiv and Odesa who would not be able to return home? What of their families and friends who would find themselves separated by what will almost certainly be a hostile border?

When Trump won the election last year, the feeling on the ground in Ukraine was one of consternation. Many seemed to believe that in upon his inauguration, US aid to Ukraine would come to an abrupt end and cause the collapse of the Ukrainian defence of the Donbas. That may yet be the case.

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Alternatively it is not outside the realm of possibility that Trump recognises a strong negotiating hand against Putin includes a strong Ukraine.

With Joe Biden having promised his last aid package on his way out and the UK’s signing of a “one hundred year bilateral partnership” with Ukraine, it appears the worst case scenario has been averted for now.

It seems likely however, that a longer, more protracted negotiation period is about to begin and there is little promise of a good deal for Ukrainians at the end of it.

All the while missiles and shahed drones continue to rain down on Ukrainian cities, the death toll both on the front line and across the country continues to rise and the only certainty is that millions of Ukrainians will continue to watch with baited breath, to see how the fourth year of full-scale war will pan out.

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