Thiessen: 5 things people get wrong about Trump and Ukraine

It is obvious from his disastrous Oval Office meeting that Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not understand President Donald Trump or what drives him when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president is not alone. Critics are convinced that Trump loves Vladimir Putin and leans toward Russia, while many on the anti-Ukraine right believe he shares their animus toward Kyiv. Both are wrong, and tend to cherry-pick his statements to support their preconceptions, while overlooking the many things he has said that undermine their narrative.

The truth is more complex. I have spent many hours talking to and interviewing Trump about Ukraine and examining all he has said on the subject since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago. I might not agree with every element of Trump’s approach, such as his decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, but unless Ukraine’s leaders understand Trump’s true goals and objectives, they will continue to find themselves at loggerheads with the man who holds the fate of their country in his hands.

Here are five things many Americans, Ukrainians and other observers don’t get about Trump when it comes to Ukraine:

1. Trump’s most pressing objective is to stop the fighting. The first thing Trump talks about when the subject of Ukraine comes up is that a) the war would never have started if he had been president, and b) he wants the killing to end. “I feel I have an obligation to try and do something to stop the death,” he said during his Feb. 28 meeting with Zelenskyy. “On both sides, we’re losing a lot of soldiers. And we want to see it stop. And we want to see the money get put to different kinds of use like rebuilding.”

This is why he wants an immediate ceasefire, while negotiations for a long-term peace deal proceed. The real damage Zelenskyy did during his Oval Office meeting was not alienating Trump personally (though he certainly did that), but convincing Trump that he does not want peace. Zelenskyy summarily dismissed an immediate ceasefire because he said Putin had already broken ceasefires 25 times, telling Trump, “That’s why we will never accept just a ceasefire. It will not work without security guarantees.” He questioned the value of diplomacy, demanding of Vice President JD Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?” And as Zelenskyy detailed Putin’s atrocities, what Trump perceived was a man so blinded by his contempt of Putin that he did not want the war to end. “You see the hatred he’s got for Putin. It’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate,” Trump said as the meeting spiraled.

This produced the worst possible outcome: Trump decided, as he put it on Truth Social, that Zelenskyy “is not ready for Peace.” Zelenskyy then reinforced that impression by telling reporters in London that an end to the war “is still very, very far away” but that he expected U.S. military aid to continue because “Ukraine has a strong enough partnership with the United States of America” to keep aid flowing. Wrong answer.

That convinced Trump — who wants to end the war in months, not years — that U.S. military assistance was encouraging Zelenskyy’s intransigence. “This guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing,” he declared in a social media post. So, he paused military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine as pressure on Zelenskyy to accept a ceasefire.

Zelenskyy should have accepted Trump’s ceasefire unconditionally, which would have put the onus on Putin: If the Russian leader rejected it or violated it, he would be object of Trump’s ire and coercion, not Zelenskyy. The sooner Zelenskyy figures this out, and convinces Trump he wants to end the fighting, the more likely military aid will resume and it will become clear that Putin is the real obstacle to peace.

2. Trump wants to help Ukraine get the best deal possible. Trump is committed to helping Ukraine survive as a sovereign and independent nation. This is why the first agreement he negotiated on returning to the White House was “a durable partnership” with Kyiv to jointly develop Ukraine’s minerals and rare earths — which, once signed, will mean America is, literally, financially invested in Ukraine’s survival.

Trump also wants to help Ukraine regain as much of its territory as possible at the peace table. During a CNN presidential debate in June, Trump was asked whether Putin’s demands that Russia “keeps the Ukrainian territory it has already claimed” were acceptable to him. “No, they’re not acceptable,” he replied. And during an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer last month, he revealed that he planned to help Ukraine recover lost territory. “A lot of the sea line has been taken, and we’ll be talking about that,” Trump said, “And we’re going to see if we can get it back or get a lot of it back for Ukraine.”

Trump also understands that Ukraine needs security guarantees. He considers the minerals deal one such guarantee. “We’re going to be working over there. We’ll be on the land. And … nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there,” Trump explained. But he knows more will be needed — which is why, during his meeting with Zelenskyy, he publicly said he was open to the possibility of sending U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping force. “I know other countries are going to, and they happen to be right next door. We haven’t committed, but we could conceivably,” he said.

Trump is open other ideas for long-term security measures. But he believes security is the last thing to be negotiated, not the first. “Security is so easy. That’s about 2 percent of the problem. I’m not worried about security. I’m worried about getting the deal done,” he said last month. I’m not sure he’s right — and Zelenskyy surely disagrees — but if Zelenskyy demands security measures up front, as a condition of ending the fighting, he will be running headlong into Trump’s negotiating strategy. That’s unwise.

3. Trump is saying nice things about Putin as a negotiating tactic. How does Trump really feel about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? “The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022. “It’s an outrage, and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.”

But now that the president is leading peace negotiations, he sees no utility in calling out Putin’s atrocities. “You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, ‘Hi, Vladimir, how are we doing on the deal?’ That doesn’t work that way,” he explained during Zelenskyy’s ill-fated visit.

Trump believes he has to be seen as a neutral arbiter to get a deal. “Well, if I didn’t align myself with both of them, you’d never have a deal,” he said in the Oval Office. “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world.” In public, Trump is neutral. But in truth, he is trying to help Kyiv survive.

And while his critics suggest he is really on Putin’s side, Trump does not feel he needs to prove his tough-on-Russia bona fides. “Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,” he told me in 2020, before laying out the litany of actions he took against Russia during his first term, from sanctions to cyberattacks. There’s no reason to think he wouldn’t do it again if he decides that Putin is the intransigent party.

Putin has told Trump that he wants peace, so Trump is accepting his “yes” — for now. But at some point soon, the Russian leader will have to prove it with actions, not words. If Putin ends up stringing Trump along, he’ll find out how quickly Trump will turn on him. Indeed, after Putin escalated missile strikes against Ukrainian cities last week, Trump reportedly grew increasingly outraged and warned he was preparing to impose “large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED.”

Putin might not realize it, but he is on a short leash. Zelenskyy’s best strategy is to be as cooperative with Trump as possible, and put Putin in a position where he is tugging on that leash, trying to avoid going where Trump wants to lead him.

4. Trump wants to protect American taxpayers. Trump has criticized how much the United States has spent on aid to Ukraine, but that is because he believes the war should never have happened and would never have happened on his watch. He tacitly supported the aid package Congress passed last year, giving Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) the green light to pass it during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago. Trump wanted it to be in the form of loans, not aid. Today, a year later, many Ukraine supporters in Congress now agree that the way to arm Ukraine going forward is through interest-bearing Foreign Military Financing loans backed by Ukrainian minerals as collateral.

Trump says the United States has spent $350 billion aiding Ukraine. He has not explained how he gets to that figure, but I suspect he’s counting everything we have spent since Russia’s full-scale invasion — including bolstering NATO’s defenses in Europe, and the deployment of additional troops and weapons to Poland and the Baltic states — as a cost of the war to U.S. taxpayers.

By contrast, Zelenskyy has unwisely downplayed U.S. financial contributions, declaring “in total, the U.S. separately gave us about $67 billion in weapons, and we received $31.5 billion in budget support.” That is a grave mistake; every member of Congress knows that they voted for $183 billion in aid to Ukraine across five bills, many under fire from the anti-Ukraine right for doing so. Undercounting that support undercuts Ukraine’s allies and comes across as ungrateful.

Trump believes he can help Ukraine survive and rebuild while making American taxpayers whole, and the minerals deal is the way to do so. Zelenskyy would be wise to stop discounting the level of U.S. support and sign the deal as soon as possible.

5. Trump does not share the hostility of the anti-Ukraine right. If anything, he considers himself the best friend Ukraine has. He liked Zelenskyy (at least before his White House meeting), and credits the Ukrainian leader with saving him during his first impeachment. “He was like a piece of steel,” Trump said, standing next to Zelenskyy at Trump Tower last summer. “He said, ‘President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong.’ He said it loud and clear. And the impeachment hoax died right there. … And I appreciated that.”

Zelenskyy took all that goodwill and squandered it with one disastrous meeting. To go from the effusive praise and genuine affection Trump showered on him at Trump Tower to getting unceremoniously thrown out of the White House was quite a diplomatic feat.

The fact is, Zelenskyy had Trump’s friendship and lost it. He needs to win it back, because — like it or not — his country’s fate depends on it. And the only way to do so is to convince Trump that, as Trump put standing next to Zelenskyy last summer: “We both want to see this [war] end.” If Trump doesn’t believe that, his gratitude for Zelenskyy’s impeachment support won’t mean much.

Perhaps I will be proved wrong about some or all this as the negotiations unfold. If I am, I’ll be the first to admit it and call Trump out. But from what I’ve seen over the past three years, I believe those who claim that Trump is siding with Putin against Ukraine are simply incorrect. And those whispering otherwise in Zelenskyy’s ear are not helping. They are setting him up for confrontation and failure.