The growing turn of President Donald Trump against his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has inspired the hopes in Ukraine and, among his supporters, he is beginning to believe what they have been saying all the time: Moscow is the antagonist and the only way to stop him is with cash and military teams.
But while the apparent U -Dramatic turn was dramatic, other supporters of Ukraine, former officials and other foreign policy experts are cautious at least and deeply skeptical in the worst case.
“The question that Europeans and Ukrainians ask,” according to Ivo Daalder, former United States ambassador to NATO, is “how real is this change? And how lasting is this change? And what really does it mean in terms of US policy towards the region?”
“This is the second time that the Trump administration has moved the positions of objectives,” Ukraine aid has briefly reduced in February, he said. “So there are many questions here.”
Trump has previously promised praise to Putin as he scored Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But on Monday at the Oval office, sitting next to NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, he said he was “very unhappy” with the Kremlin and that the United States would sell “first -line weapons” to NATO allies, including very demanded patriotic missiles, so that they can be used in Ukraine.
Along with that, if Putin does not agree on a peace agreement in 50 days, Trump said, he will slapped 100% of tariffs on any country that bought Russian goods. That delay time has been criticized throughout Europe, with officials and experts who ask why Trump is giving additional time to a autocrat who has barely faltered in his desire to subjugate Ukraine.
Anxiety is further driven by generalized perception in Europe and in other places that Trump is a president who makes decisions for whim and is prone to change them.
Trump himself hinted at this propensity to change his mind quickly. He remembered having gone home one night and telling the first lady Melania Trump: “‘I talked to Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation.” To which he replied: “Oh, oh, in reality, another city was beaten” in Ukraine by the missiles of Russia.
The exact details of Trump’s new direction are not yet clear.
He said that the purchase list included Patriot missiles, the state -of -the -art defensive system that Ukraine says that he desperately needs to defend himself from the almost nightlife assaults of Russia.
The NATO European allies were going to buy “billions of dollars in military teams” from the United States “and that will be quickly distributed to the battlefield” in Ukraine, he added.
Patriot missiles could reach Ukraine “very soon, in a few days, actually”, accelerated by European nations that give their existing weapons to Ukraine and replace them with the new systems delivered by the United States, he said.
“This is really great,” said Routte, a man who often considers Trump praise. “It will mean that Ukraine can have a really massive number of military equipment, both for air defense, and also missiles, ammunition, etc.” He added: “If I am Ukraine, I think this is great news.”
Zelenskyy, who crashed several times with Trump and his team, published in X thanking the president “for the will to support Ukraine and continue working together to stop the murders and establish a lasting and fair peace.”
Other endorsements came with warnings.
The United States “has realized that Russia really does not want peace, so to have peace, we need to support Ukraine and that we need to press Russia,” said Kaja Kallas, head of foreign policy of the European Union, to journalists in Brussels on Tuesday.
However, he suggested that waiting for almost two months to impose rates was too long: “Fifty days is a long time if we see that they are killing innocent civilians every day.”
That is also an opinion in the hands of Yuriy Boyechko, CEO and founder of Hope for Ukraine, a non -profit organization based in Portland, Oregon, which supports Ukrainian refugees in the United States
“This is too long,” he said. “Unless a significant pressure on Putin and the Russian economy immediately, the most innocent civilians will die.”
Russian officials mixed tombs with mockery.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Trump’s statements as “very serious” because he was “personally addressed to President Putin.” While the former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, described him as a “theatrical ultimatum” on which “Russia didn’t care.”
A senior Kremlin official told NBC News that Putin can’t hurry to answer. “We need to analyze the situation,” he said. “It can take some time.”
Ultimately, the optimism of Ukraine supporters will be issued by what is really in Trump’s weapons agreement, and if you stay with your renewed direction of thinking about the conflict.
“We need to be a bit cautious about whether this is a maritime change in Trump’s opinion or if it is just another part of a lateral effect as it advances back and forth,” said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences of the Royal United Services Institute of London, to the British NBC News, Sky News. “Its primary objective is to obtain credit to end the fight.”
