President Donald Trump has significantly shifted his rhetoric regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine. Whereas he has spent months talking tough against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, putting all the pressure on Ukraine, he has now turned on Putin. The big question is why.
“I’m not happy with what Putin is doing,” Trump explained this week. “He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.” He added, “I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
Later, he took to Truth Social to declare that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Yesterday, he continued his verbal assault: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
Putin has been a bad guy for his entire career. He’s been deliberately killing Ukrainian civilians for more than three years. Neither of those things has changed in recent days or months. What has changed is that Trump isn’t gaining traction (yet) on his oft-repeated promise to end the war in “24 hours.” That was never a literal promise, of course, though the Leftmedia always prefers to take Trump literally so they can dismiss him seriously.
“I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration,” Trump told Time magazine in April. “It was said in jest.”
It’s one thing for the American Pravda media to dismiss Trump; it’s another thing for Putin to do so. Last week, Trump had a two-hour phone conversation with Putin to discuss a peace deal. The American president came away from that call saying “it went very well” and that Russia and Ukraine were set to “immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire.”
Reality intruded in the form of more Russian attacks and more dead Ukrainian civilians.
Of Trump’s big rhetorical shift, Fox News reports, “Trump’s comments came after Russian forces launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities [over the weekend]. The attack, which has been called the largest aerial attack of the war so far, targeted the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. … Though past strikes have proven more deadly, the attack is the largest-scale aerial assault of the war in terms of the number of weapons: 298 drones and 69 missiles were launched.”
That is the significant part, and many media commentators are missing it.
Putin has ramped up attacks because he has changed tactics to rely on drones. He’s flying hundreds of drones to attack civilians in Ukraine to help keep Russian soldiers out of harm’s way. His drone production capacity has increased drastically, greatly reducing the domestic political cost of his assaults.
What can Trump do about this? Should he do something?
Most of the MAGA movement has coalesced around the firm idea that Ukraine ain’t our problem. Trump himself often repeats — correctly — that “this is a War that would never have started if I were President.” True, but that’s a moot point, which he seems to realize. He is, after all, continuing to push for a peaceful resolution and to extricate the U.S. from any further involvement or support.
“I am only helping to put out the big and ugly fires,” he said.
Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, “President Trump is eyeing sanctions against Moscow.” Then again, “Trump might also decide not to impose new sanctions.” Several Republicans are pushing for sanctions.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that they won’t work. “If you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking,” Rubio said. “And there is value in us being able to talk to them and to drive them to get to the table.”
Well, those talks don’t seem to be working, either. The Journal says, “Trump is also tiring of the peace negotiations and is considering abandoning them altogether if a final push doesn’t work.”
That threat has been hanging in the air for months. Rubio himself skipped ceasefire talks in April. Vice President JD Vance made what he called Trump’s “final offer” in April, as well.
This is all quintessential Trump rope-a-dope strategy, keeping Russia guessing for the moment to gain leverage. Russia effectively has one major export: oil. If the U.S. were to finally slap some major sanctions on that oil, including taking on China, which buys that oil specifically to keep funding the Russian war machine, it could persuade Putin that continuing the war is costlier than ending it — even with the Russian advantage of drones. Evidently, some dancing is necessary before getting to that point.
Whatever move Trump makes next, there are basic facts here: Putin is a Soviet, through and through, and he aims to restore Russian greatness. He keeps fighting because he wants to keep fighting. Until that calculus changes, things will continue as they are.
