The Russian side has revealed that during talks with the American delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week in Riyadh, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov demanded that NATO scrap its 2008 promise to eventually give Ukraine membership in the Western military alliance.
The response to this has been positive, given Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth already made clear last week that a Ukrainian path to NATO membership won't happen and is off the table.
The NY Times has summarized Trump's 'flipping the script' as follows:
Three years almost to the day later, President Trump is rewriting the history of Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbor. Ukraine, in this version, is not a victim but a villain. And Mr. Zelensky is not a latter-day Winston Churchill, but a “dictator without elections” who somehow started the war himself and conned America into helping.
Lavrov has responded, telling lawmakers of Trump that "He is the first, and so far, in my opinion, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO."
"No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position when President (Vladimir) Putin," Lavrov added.
And this how former Russian president and top national security official Dmitry Medvedev responded:
"A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left." If you'd told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud. @realDonaldTrump is 200 percent right. Bankrupt clown…
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) February 19, 2025
Trump had written previously on Truth Social, "Biden never tried [to end the war], Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…" He has also addressed Ukraine, saying "You should have never started it."
But there's been plenty of dissent this side of the Atlantic. For example, Trump's own former vice president Mike Pence had this to say: "Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war," he wrote online. "Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth."
Trump has expressed a willingness to end this brutal war by any means possible, and appears ready to push Ukraine into territorial concessions. As for the underlying cause of the war, recall that Oleksiy Arestovych, former Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine under Zelensky, previously declared (in 2019) that "with a 99.9% probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia."
