Whether out of an overwhelming sense of humanity or his ongoing desire to secure a Nobel Peace Prize, President Donald Trump is working hard to resolve the war in Ukraine with a diplomatic settlement as soon as possible. And it appears he’s willing to levy an extraordinary amount of pressure to get there. The Trump administration’s change in approach has gotten European leaders nervous at best and downright distraught at worst. On Thursday, nearly a week after Trump shouted over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their televised Oval Office meeting, European leaders held an emergency summit to cope with the fallout.
Trump’s objective is less about ending it in a “just peace” as Kyiv and Washington’s European allies frequently proclaim and more about ending it, period.
“It’s time to stop this madness,” Trump told lawmakers Tuesday in his first speech to Congress since getting his election. “It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end the senseless war.” Who can argue with the sentiment? The conflict in Ukraine, which entered its fourth year last month, killed tens of thousands of people and resulted in more than $500 billion worth of damage. The pace of the fighting isn’t getting any less intense over time. The Ukrainian army is holding its own but remains under severe pressure from a larger adversary whose leader, Vladimir Putin, has elevated the war above all other priorities.
Trump, however, is receiving strong pushback over the tactics he’s using to bring the war to a close. Unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, Trump’s objective is less about ending it in a “just peace” as Kyiv and Washington’s European allies frequently proclaim and more about ending it, period. And unlike Biden, Trump is not afraid to use the stick to get the combatants to cooperate. Since Washington ultimately has more leverage over Kyiv than Moscow — the U.S. has provided Ukraine $120 billion in assistance, including $67 billion in military aid, since the war began — Trump has chosen to use the tools he has to bring Zelenskyy into compliance with a diplomatic process he clearly wants to succeed. The Trump administration has paused not only military support to Ukraine but also intelligence cooperation, although national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe suggested the next morning that the pause could be lifted if the Ukrainians formally enter peace talks.
Some foreign policy analysts and Democratic lawmakers are aghast. Others have compared Trump’s about-face on the war to the U.S. switching sides during World War II. Alexander Vindman, a former National Security Council aide, even claimed that Trump was now pursuing a Russia First policy.
But amid all the hyperbole, it’s important to consider several key points.
First and foremost, the Trump administration is absolutely correct to strive for a diplomatic settlement to this war. Although the Russians have made their fair share of mistakes during the course of three years of combat, the facts on the ground and the trends on the battlefield remain at Kyiv’s disadvantage. The Ukrainians are still licking their wounds from a 2023 counteroffensive in the east, which stalled out in short order and produced little in the way of tangible territorial gains. Outside of an incursion into Russia’s Kursk province last summer — Russia has reportedly retaken about half of the land the Ukrainians originally captured — the Ukrainian army has been on the defensive for well over a year.
All of this is exacerbating Ukraine’s systemic manpower issues. Vice President JD Vance was overly obnoxious about it during his argument with Zelenskyy last week, but he wasn’t wrong: The Ukrainians are hurting for personnel and have resorted to extraordinary measures, like plucking draft-age men off the streets, to fill in the ranks. Ukrainian troops at the front haven’t had a decent rest since the first bombs were dropped in February 2022, a consequence of Ukrainian politicians remaining highly resistant to a nationwide mobilization, which would involve drafting younger men into the army.
The Russians have their problems, too. According to one assessment, more than 780,000 Russians have been killed or injured in the war to date. The difference, however, is that Russia is still recruiting enough replacements every month to account for the casualties. Kyiv, therefore, must engage in some serious introspection and ask itself whether it serves Ukraine’s interests to let the war continue, or whether it’s better to cut a deal now before the hole becomes too deep to climb out of. In the end, this is a decision only Zelenskyy, not Trump, can make.
Second, the collective freak-out over Trump’s latest Ukraine moves glosses over a key point: Continuing the Biden administration’s policy on the war would have effectively meant signing the U.S. up to a failed approach. Yes, Biden and his advisers did an admirable job assembling a multinational coalition on Ukraine’s behalf in short order. Without the tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance, from air defense to medium-range ballistic missiles, Ukraine’s position would be worse than it is today.
The weapons deliveries and international support, however, were supposed to be a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The end Biden should have striven for was a diplomatic settlement to end the war on terms acceptable to the combatants. At the very least, Biden could have started the process. Instead, he outsourced U.S. policy on the war to Zelenskyy, who remained steadfast in his belief that Ukraine could win the conflict militarily. Talk from U.S. officials about supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” combined with Biden’s opposition to dragging Kyiv into a peace discussion it didn’t want to have, ultimately proved counterproductive because it allowed Zelenskyy to defer talks indefinitely. Why think about concessions to your enemy when you have a superpower pledging total, unconditional support?
Finally, it’s vital to recognize that U.S. and Ukrainian interests aren’t identical. Even Biden recognized this; while he was committed to defeating Russia’s invasion just as Zelenskyy was, he was also rightly concerned about escalation dynamics and sought to balance support for Ukraine’s war effort with conflict-avoidance between NATO and Russia. Ultimately, Ukraine is in a fight for its survival and wants to win the war — or at least negotiate a peace on its terms. The U.S., though, has bigger fish to fry than Ukraine, and one of them is to ensure that Washington and Moscow, the world’s two largest nuclear weapons powers, don’t stupidly find themselves in a scenario where direct conflict is plausible. Biden recognized this, to the frustration of the Ukrainians; Trump, however, wears it like a badge of honor.
Look at how Trump has conducted himself over the last week. Yelling at another head of state in the Oval Office, particularly when it’s in front of TV cameras and the man on the receiving end is in the middle of an existential conflict, is bad optics. But if the U.S. objective is to settle the war immediately, then using the power at your disposal to move in that direction is a logical extension of the policy. And love them or hate them, the tactics may be effective: Zelenskyy is more amenable to a negotiation today than he was even a few days earlier, and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said the U.S. was planning a sit-down with Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia next week.
Whether all of this results in a peace deal is a separate question.