Donald Trump was on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday morning when he was asked about a Russian drone attack that hit a hospital in Ukraine overnight, injuring nine people.
“I know,” he said. “You’ll be seeing things happen.”
The US president’s comments highlighted how his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin for failing to budge in talks to end the war he launched three years ago appears to have reached a tipping point.
Over the past week, Trump has said he will be providing additional weapons, including Patriot air defence systems, to Ukraine; signalled his willingness to embrace much tougher sanctions against Moscow; and blasted the Russian president.
He also vowed to issue a “major statement” on the war in Ukraine this coming Monday, without elaborating.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin,” Trump vented on Tuesday. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump’s ire represents a big shift in tone from the White House. The president spent the early months of his second term pinning the blame for the conflict on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including during an infamous, public dressing-down in the Oval Office in late February.
Since then, Trump has become increasingly unhappy with Russia’s intransigence in talks over a possible ceasefire that would pave the way for the longer-term settlement — a primary foreign policy goal for the US president.
“We’re the closest we have been to new financial measures or new pressure being put on Putin for this entire administration,” said Kristine Berzina. managing director at the German Marshall Fund of the US.
Yet while Trump’s bluster against Putin will ease fears that the White House will completely abandon Ukraine, it may not represent a profound shift in Kyiv’s favour.
“This is a shot across Russia and Putin’s bow that he’s sick of being strung along,” said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank. “But it doesn’t actually mean that the US is going to shift to being suddenly a big ally and backer of Ukraine, or more significantly than it has been.”
Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said that during a meeting at last month’s Nato summit, Zelenskyy said his “first priority” was securing help to defend Ukrainian cities from Russia’s serial assault. Trump this week said the US would be sending additional Patriot systems to Nato allies for them to distribute to Ukraine.
“It would be good news if the president follows through and ensures that he makes good on those statements,” Shaheen said.
In his evening address from Kyiv on Friday, Zelenskyy also suggested the geopolitical winds were shifting in Ukraine’s favour. “We have received political signals at the highest level — good signals, particularly from the United States of America and from our European friends.”
He added that Kyiv would next week be discussing military co-operation with Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg and expected “strong steps” on sanctions as well.
Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of Ukraine’s 429th “Achilles” drone regiment, said Trump’s changing rhetoric “is good for us”.
“We can see that tensions between Washington and Moscow are rising,” Federenko said.
But while Trump’s rhetoric has raised some hopes in Europe of a potential shift in his attitude, two senior officials involved in defence and security negotiations with Washington said there was still little tangible evidence of the White House taking a more pro-Kyiv stance.
Western allies of Ukraine were still assuming Trump was predisposed to seeing Putin as his main negotiating partner in any settlement and Zelenskyy as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal, the officials said.
They added that while Patriots were critical to Ukraine’s ability to better defend its troops and its cities, they would not change its ability to strike back against Russia nor shift the overall dynamic of the war.
“There’s a little bit of overexcitement based on a shift in tone,” said one of the officials. “But we’re not seeing that translate into major actions.”
Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said: “I would say Trump’s announcement is probably more a factor of his frustration with Putin, rather than his affection for Zelenskyy or his support for Ukraine.”
Nevertheless, the Ukrainian president has become more successful at managing Trump. Following the Oval Office confrontation, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron advised Zelenskyy on how to shift his approach to dealing with the US president by offering emphatic praise and always thanking Washington for its support, according to US, French and Ukrainian officials familiar with the matter.
The Ukrainian president is still dealing with an administration in which scepticism about helping Kyiv runs deep — both from officials who believe the US needs to focus more on Asia rather than Europe, and others who are philosophically non-interventionist.
“What we have seen is a lack of consistency in this administration’s approach to Ukraine, and what we need to do to support ending that conflict and pressuring Russia,” Shaheen said.
The administration is continuing to negotiate with Moscow. This week Marco Rubio, the secretary of the state, met Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, for talks in Malaysia. But there was no breakthrough.
Rubio told reporters there had been a different “approach” from Russia but did not offer any details. “I wouldn’t characterise it as something that guarantees a peace.”
The Russian foreign minister made it clear the Kremlin was not prepared to budge on any of Putin’s maximalist demands, telling Rubio he “confirmed the position Putin has put out”.
“It was obvious from the first talks after inauguration that Putin wasn’t interested in peace except on his terms. He thinks he can win the war,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“Putin decided there’s no point doing a deal with the US because western support for Ukraine is fracturing anyway. We’ll have to see on the battlefield if he was right.”
