Putin's Simp No More?

Be cautiously optimistic, but recognize Trump's shift as a small but good sign

Finally, some more weapons from Trump (Credit: REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov)

Months after breaking his promise to end the Russo-Ukrainian war on Day 1, it seems US President Donald Trump has finally realized Russian President Vladimir Putin is bad, and is acting on it.

Since last week, when Trump announced he is resuming sending military aid to Ukraine following a temporary pause in the Pentagon, the president has made a surprising shift in favor of Kyiv instead of Moscow. And that shift is more evident at the beginning of the week.

First scooped by Axios before the week began, Trump prepared to announce a new and "aggressive" weapons plan to Ukraine, including long-range missiles that could reach targets deep inside Russian territory.

During a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump confirmed he would allow NATO allies to purchase air defense systems and other weapons, including Patriot missiles, for Ukraine.

The weapons, worth “billions of dollars,” will be built by the U.S. defense industry and financed by European countries, Trump said.

“We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they’re going to be paying for them,” Trump said, noting that NATO would coordinate the weapons transfers. “They feel strongly about it and we feel strongly about it, too. But we’re in it for a lot of money and we don’t want to do it anymore.”

Aside from both Rutte and Trump praising the deal, the US President suggested he would impose 100% secondary tariffs on Russia if it does not reach a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine in 50 days, adding he is “very unhappy” with the current peace progress and “disappointed” with Putin.

If Trump imposes the secondary tariffs, they would target Russia’s trading partners in an attempt to isolate Moscow in the global economy further.

The US President also said the person who got him to understand that Putin was tricking him was his wife, Melania: “I go home. I tell the first lady ‘I spoke to Vladimir [Putin] today. We had a wonderful conversation.’ She said, ‘Oh really? Another city was just hit.”

What to make of Trump’s sudden mood switch? I think we need to tread with caution. On one hand, it is quite hillarious and ironically evident from the start that Putin does not have any good faith in stopping the “special military operation” he started in February 2022. On the other hand, this sort of presidential TACOing (Trump Always Chickens Out) should be welcomed by pro-Ukraine supporters who have spent months trying to persuade the president to support its war-torn ally.

In this case, Zelensky’s repeated actions in support of a ceasefire might have paid off. Despite the fiasco in the Oval Office earlier this year, the Ukrainian president kept his cool and did his best to maintain a fragile friendship with his American counterpart. If you have tuned in to the conflict in recent months, whenever Russia or the US makes a “proposal” or offers an opportunity for ceasefire talks or a deal, Zelensky openly accepts it. More importantly, Ukraine shows off its “UNO reverse card” in every step of the way, urging Russia to commit to the same promises.

As Putin and the Russian delegation repeatedly show hypocrisy and double standards in commitment and promises, Trump was bound to notice as the war drags on. I would argue that Trump’s sympathies with Vladimir Putin might have helped Ukraine in its favor, at least for the time being. Because if you throw every benefit of the doubt towards the Russian dictator, and he still plays you like a fool, even the dumbest idiot would realize what’s going on.

By the way, kudos to Melania Trump for being the reasonable voice in the room. Despite my belief that she is on the same level as most of the Trump family in terms of sheer opportunism and shamelessness, Melania’s ability to call out her husband in real time and in private is something many Ukraine advocates would love to see.

As Benjamin Wittes, an ardent advocate for Ukraine, puts it, he is satisfied with Trump’s shift despite the drama that led us to this point

How should we all feel about this?

Good.

It’s good.

Very good.

Trump comes to this decision as grudgingly as possible. And it’s easy to make fun of how duped he has been by Putin over how long a period of a time.

But getting Ukraine aid right—or as right as possible—is way too important for schadenfreude. I’ll leave that to the Epstein files issues.

The plan itself is needlessly indirect. Under it, the US will sell weapons—including advanced Patriot air defense batteries—to NATO countries, which will then provide them to Ukraine. But this is a hell of a lot better than, say, cutting off Ukraine’s access to air defense interceptors, which is where the administration was a few days ago. And Trump does genuinely seem frustrated that Putin hasn’t just stopped being a genocidal maniac because Trump asked him to.

All of this is progress.

In those rare instances in which Trump does the right thing on a massive issue on which human lives depend, I will never fire on his retreat.

From a military and diplomatic standpoint, Trump might have finally decided to get tough on Russia. As he spent most of the first six months in office bashing Ukraine and doing a will-he-won’t-he in pulling support away from Kyiv, we might see Trump doing the same thing, but to his supposed “friends” in Moscow.

As David Ignatius from the Washington Post noted, Trump “escalates to de-escalate.”

Trump decided to escalate for three reasons, according to a source familiar with administration discussions. First, he believed that Putin was disrespecting him, feigning a readiness to make peace but ignoring the U.S. president’s call for a ceasefire. Second, he saw the efficacy of U.S. military power in the use of B-2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles against Iran. And third, he thought Putin would only negotiate if threatened with greater force. As the Russians like to say, Trump decided to “escalate to de-escalate.”

Trump has made a sound choice in recognizing that Putin won’t make concessions without more pressure. But the president has also embarked on an escalatory course whose risks are unknowable. It was interesting that the one question Trump didn’t want to answer in Monday’s Oval Office session was: If Putin decides to escalate further, how far are you willing to go in response?

“Don’t ask me a question like that, ‘How far?’” Trump snapped. “I just want to get the war settled.”

If Trump can make this new pressure campaign work, he might just deserve Nobel’s famous prize. But on the way to peace, there might be more dynamite.

Can we trust this shift to last? I’m not confident in it. As many world leaders know, Trump is very easy to manipulate, and the one who can change the president’s mind is the last person who talked to him in the same room. It could take one phone call for Trump to revert to his Putin-sympathizing phase.

But at the same time, the opposite could happen. Trump could (either accidentally or deliberately) contribute to Putin’s loss in his already stalling war in Ukraine, which has seen casualties pile up during his summer offensive amid claims by Zelensky that it has “fallen far short” of expectations for the Kremlin.

In a more likely scenario, Trump would just let the war play out by itself. He has compared this conflict to two kids fighting it out on the playground. Despite it being nonsensical, his statement reflects how Trump sees global conflicts through a narrow vision of pure fighting without context. Now, as he is given the context first-hand, his decisions will have to be informed by previous interactions.

For outsiders and observers, Trump’s recent actions can provide a brief moment of respite, but don’t bet on it as a policy shift anytime soon.