As Ukraine and its allies absorbed the surprise from US President Donald Trump\u2019s newly upbeat view of Kyiv\u2019s prospects in its war against Russia\u2019s invasion, there were signs of a familiar move by the US president \u2013 upping the pressure not on Russia but on Europe.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s social media post on Tuesday reversed his past claims that Ukraine had \u201cno cards to play\u201d in the fight. But he did not offer any new US steps to support Kyiv, leaving that up to allies in Europe. The post made no mention of new moves to tighten sanctions on Russia, either.<\/p>\n
In public, Ukrainian and European officials hailed Trump\u2019s verbal shift, which followed a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Privately, they were more cautious, sensing he was pushing the responsibility for ending the war to them. Though Trump seemed to set a baseline for US support \u2013 easing allied fears of a cut-off of vital military aid \u2013 officials also warned that Trump\u2019s view may change again.<\/p>\n
His assertion that Ukraine could retake \u2013 with Europe\u2019s support \u2013 the 20 per cent of its territory lost to Russia also goes against most allied intelligence assessments, which see a bloody stalemate as the most either side can hope for at present. The Kremlin has dramatically stepped up strikes in the six weeks since Trump hosted Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss a peace deal, though progress on the ground has been limited.<\/p>\n
By suggesting Russia could be a \u201cpaper tiger\u201d on the verge of economic crisis, Trump is \u201creally just trying to get under Putin\u2019s skin\u201d, said Kurt Volker, who was special envoy for Ukraine talks in Trump\u2019s first term. \u201cBut he doesn\u2019t suggest that he\u2019s going to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s economy is increasingly feeling the pain of the war effort \u2013 the government warned on Wednesday that it plans to raise taxes to help offset the cost \u2013 and Ukraine\u2019s strikes on energy and other infrastructure have reached deep behind the front lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Ukraine and its allies absorbed the surprise from US President Donald Trump\u2019s newly upbeat view of Kyiv\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[3292,23,144,106625,12,18758,1076,11320,9174,2344,106624,7931,106626,11808,3,34451,1206,94674,1208,100896,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-179913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-alaska","tag-america","tag-china","tag-council-on-foreign-relations","tag-donald-trump","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-fox-news","tag-hungary","tag-india","tag-kurt-volker","tag-kyiv","tag-liana-fix","tag-mike-waltz","tag-news","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-slovakia","tag-ukraine","tag-un-general-assembly","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}