However, Putin rejected all of the US president’s incredibly generous requirements for a ceasefire and an ultimate peace deal, even when Trump turned against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after taking office again, including in a well-known Oval Office blow-up.

It appears that President Donald Trump has absorbed the terrible lesson that all of his predecessors in the twenty-first century have learned: US relations with Vladimir Putin cannot be restored. Trump’s journey from admiring the Russian leader to denouncing him has been a dramatic display of geopolitical personalization. However, what follows is much more crucial.

The president’s realization opens up fresh options for Ukraine, Putin’s congressional detractors, and America’s browbeaten allies. However, there are risks involved as well, chief among them being a battle of will between alpha males Putin and Trump, who own the two most powerful nuclear arsenals in the world. Trump constantly uses rhetoric and tariffs to try to up the ante with both global allies and adversaries. However, as increasing drone blitzes on Kyiv — a clear warning to the White House — demonstrate, Obama is now facing a vicious foe who ups the ante not with belligerence but with human lives.

Given Trump’s transactional style, it is reasonable to wonder how long his animosity toward his former ally in the Kremlin would endure. Even while he talks of assisting Ukraine in defending itself, it’s difficult to imagine his change going as far as the tens of billions of dollars in financial and military aid that the US Congress delivered to Kyiv under the Biden administration. But on Thursday, the president told NBC News that he had negotiated a deal with NATO to deliver new Patriot anti-missile systems to Kyiv, which is desperately in need of fending off Russian strikes on civilian targets.

The president stated, “We are sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100%.” He went on to say, “We will be sending Patriots to NATO, and NATO will distribute that.” CNN has contacted the alliance, but the deal’s precise terms were not immediately apparent.

It appears that Trump has reached a turning point. He no longer unreasonably blames Ukraine, the war’s victim, but now accuses Russia, the aggressor, of needlessly extending the conflict.

How does this alter US strategy toward Russia and the war, Trump’s own attempts to assert US leadership, and domestic politics around Ukraine?

 

Although it was a shocking turn of events, Trump’s statement this week that he was tired of Putin’s “bullsh*t” was typical of his occasionally sarcastic style of leadership. Trump made a greater effort than anyone else to convince Putin to halt the conflict in Ukraine, which began with an unlawful invasion in 2022. He has praised the Russian leader’s strength and intelligence for years.