Trump reverses the position of Ukraine, now supports land retirement occupied by Russia

President Donald Trump shocked the international community this week when he said he had overthrew his position on the war in Ukraine and said he thought Kyiv could take over all his occupied lands seized by Russia.

In a commentary on Tuesday on social networks, he said: “I think that Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is able to fight and reconquer all of Ukraine in its original form.”

“Over time, the patience and financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the borders of origin from which this war started, is an option,” he added. “Why not?”

This position is a striking reversal from which it was held when it came back for the first time and, during an infamous of February from the oval office of February with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told him that he “had not) the cards” to be taken on Russia, and suggested on several occasions that Kyiv needed to make important concessions to end the war.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets President Donald Trump on the sidelines of UNGA in New York on September 23, 2025. (Ukrainian Presidency / Handout / Anadolu via Getty Images)

“We note that his approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine has already changed spectacular,” Fox News Digital Yuriy Sak, former defense advisor of Zelenskyy, told Fox News. “This change in his approach will result in, hopefully, more unity in terms of Western alliance and their support for Ukraine.”

The response to the change of attitude of Trump was welcomed with mixed responses of the best security experts, some considering it as a positive change, while others, like the former head of the Cia Moscow station, Dan Hoffman, argued that words alone will have little effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“During all the years that I spent trying to see the world through KGB Tordus eyes by Vladimir Putin … He doesn’t care about the words,” said Hoffman. “He thinks he can use them against us.

“We have not dissuaded him to threaten Poland, Estonia, Copenhagen and Norway militarily – the United States and NATO have not dissuaded it.” He did it, “continued Hoffman, referring to the violations of the airspace in which Russia has deployed drones and NATO hunting planes in incidents The White House.

“He tries to show that the United States is not able to launch to dissuade Russia from threatening NATO members in Eastern Europe,” said the Russian security expert. “He wants to try to show in Ukraine, the United States does not have the opportunity to project power into this part of the world. To show Ukraine” you do not want to count on the United States, stop fighting, we will fight anyway, we will exploit you “-that’s where its strategy is.”

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President Donald Trump welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 15, 2025, with Elmendorf-Richardson Base in Alaska. (Julia Demaoree Nikhinson / The Associated Press)

Russia postponed Trump’s comments on Wednesday and suggested that he was “wrong” in his evaluation of the progression of the war.

“The dynamic on the front line speaks for themselves,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters.

Russia has made little significant progress on the front line since the beginning of 2024. Although some small advances were made this year, the front lines have remained widely frozen in the last 18 months.

Hoffman argued that if the United States wanted to see Ukraine making progress, it must raise all strike restrictions, it has in place and immediately apply secondary sanctions, rather than waiting for Europe to simultaneously follow up, because they will take months to toll on the chest of the Russian war.

Washington should also consider NATO allies with strong framework, including Germany to provide Ukraine with long -term strike missiles, and Denmark to close the Danish Strait of the Ghost Fleet of Russia, as well as to obtain Trump allies, like the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, to stop buying Russian oil.

While Hoffman argued that there was more to do before Putin really begins to reassess his war operations in Ukraine, the Lithuanian Minister of Defense Dovilė Šakalienė said that the inversion of the president’s post was “very encouraging”.

“I fully agree with the declaration that, definitively, Ukraine has a right and a chance, with our full support, to return to return to its original borders, its internationally recognized borders,” she told Fox News Digital. “Because why not?”

Sakaline echoed Hoffman and said that Ukraine needs appropriate support to completely counter Russia, and without more American support and NATO, not only will Ukraine be able to make progress in the battlefield, Russia will continue to threaten NATO – increasing the risk of a massive international war.

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A soldier from the 24th mechanized brigade named after King Danyo from the Ukrainian armed forces draws a self-propelled Howitzer of 2S5 “Hyacinth-s” towards the Russian troops on the front line, in the middle of the attack of Russia on Ukraine, near the city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetk region, Ukraine 18, 2024. (Oleg Petrasiuk / Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Speed ​​Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces via Reuters)

“The only obstacle would be our fear-our inability to defend the rules of the world in which we live,” she said. “The recent series of incidents, both linked to the drone in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and also linked to the foray into our airspace by Russian fighter planes, demonstrate Russia again.

“It will continue (and) it will degenerate, because they feel that they are impassive, because they believe that they are untouchable, and it means that they readily challenge NATO too,” said Sakaline.

The three security experts have agreed that the role of the United States in the fight against Putin is “critical” and the argument that the United States should take a rear seat in Europe weakens the united front to stop Russia.

“Current global security architecture is built around the United States axis,” said Sakaline, arguing that the system should not be exploited, but supported by the strengthening of its own military capacities by Europe. “But that also means that the voice of the United States was and is still vital for certain decisions related to the security of a democratic world.”

“And that the voice of the United States is the one that Russia hears the strongest,” she said.

Trump suggested Tuesday that Ukraine should not only resume the land seized by Russia, but “maybe even go further than that”.

Sak rejected this and said that Ukraine looked at the situation through a “realistic” lens.

“We have never had the ambition to conquer Russian territory. We don’t need it,” said Sak. “We just want to get them out of our earth.

“We understand that in this stage, even this objective is not possible to be achieved by military means,” he continued. “This should be a mixture of diplomatic means, and it will probably take a long time.”

In the end, Ukraine considered Trump’s comments not as a signal that the United States will take immediate measures, but rather as a “confirmation” that Trump is now fully aboard the support of Ukraine and aligning with the NATO alliance.

Infographic with a map of Ukraine locating territories claimed by Russia (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea, which was annexed in 2014), as well as Russian territorial advances, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical threats of AEI, in August 17, 2025. (Guillermo Rivas Pacheco, Jean-Michel Cornu / AFP via Getty Images)

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“Standing in the shoulder with Ukraine European partners … This alone represents a great threat to Russia,” said Sak. “They know it, and this once again sends them a message that it is an unjustifiable war for them.

“Sooner or later, when we paralyze their economy in a combination of sanctions plus the deep strike drones that we make daily, Russia will be in a position which, despite their desire to fight this war and continue to provoke these crimes of aggression, it will not only be able to do so for economic reasons,” added Sak.