Trump’s change in tone is valuable to Ukraine – but more than words are needed

This article is more than 1 month old
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Trump’s change in tone is valuable to Ukraine – but more than words are needed
This article is more than 1 month old
Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor
US president’s assertion that Kyiv can regain all land lost to Russia can only be achieved through more direct help on the battlefield

Wed 24 Sep 2025 13.36 CEST
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Who can keep up? In a single social media post, Donald Trump declared that Kyiv’s under-pressure military could, in fact, “WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form”.

On the plus side, from Ukraine’s perspective, the comments do suggest the US president has definitively abandoned his effort to persuade it to give up Donetsk province for a loose promise of ceasefire talks from Moscow – which was briefly the outcome of his Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin.

The change in Trump’s tone is worth something to Kyiv. But if the US president were to be serious about a Ukrainian battlefield victory, it would require not just further economic sanctions, but a far greater provision of American weapons and probably direct military intervention on the part of the west as well.