The extraordinary pivot is upending decades of hawkish foreign policy, raising questions about the future of post-World War II global security project.
President Donald Trump has said Ukraine — not Russia — started the war. He’s called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — not Vladimir Putin — a dictator. Meanwhile, Trump’s administration is standing down on a suite of tough anti-Kremlin policies.
In just over a month, Trump has executed a startling realignment of American foreign policy, effectively throwing U.S. support behind Moscow and rejecting the tight alliance with Kyiv cultivated by former President Joe Biden.
The extraordinary pivot has upended decades of hawkish foreign policy toward Russia that provided a rare area of bipartisan consensus in an increasingly divided nation. Trump’s recent moves have drawn international attention, unsettling U.S. allies in Europe and thrilling conservative populists who favor a turn away from Zelenskyy.
The new posture was put in stark relief on Friday during a tense Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy. The leaders clashed in front of the press, raising questions about the future of American support for Kyiv, more than three years after Russia opened the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.
U.S. officials have made a series of policy changes in recent weeks that seem to herald a more cooperative stance with Russia:
-The White House ordered a pause on military aid to Ukraine as the administration carries out a review, a White House official and a U.S. official told NBC News on Monday.
-Late last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to cease offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia, a U.S. official familiar with the matter told NBC News. It’s unclear how long the order will last.
-Attorney General Pam Bondi, on her first day in office, disbanded efforts to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs, breaking up Biden-era programs known as Task Force Klepto Capture and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative.
-In a separate directive, Bondi ordered a halt to a federal law enforcement initiative to combat secret influence campaigns by Russia, China and other traditional U.S. adversaries that attempt to sow division in U.S. politics.
-Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top Trump administration officials traveled to Saudi Arabia last month to start peace negotiations with Russia — but Zelenskyy said Ukrainian officials hadn’t been invited.
-Trump has long professed a desire to reset and improve relations with Russia. He has repeatedly said he believes it is in the national interest to “get along” with Moscow and cast doubt on the value of core parts of the post-World War II global security architecture, including NATO and the European Union. Trump’s first term was shadowed by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — a probe that Trump has repeatedly dismissed as the “Russia hoax.”
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki in 2018.Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file
Trump has pushed back on Democrats and other critics who have accused him of deferring to Russia.
“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, I’m aligned with the world, and I want to get this thing over with,” Trump said Friday from the Oval Office, referring to the Russia-Ukraine war.
But the U.S. government now appears to be pivoting away from Kyiv. In the weeks since his inauguration, Trump has suggested Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion and “started” the war, echoing familiar talking points from the Kremlin.
The president’s relationship with Zelenskyy has long been fraught, partly owing to a July 2019 phone call in which Trump pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter over the latter’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. After the call leaked, it helped touch off the first impeachment of Trump. (He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.)
Vice President JD Vance has likewise been consistently skeptical of continued U.S. assistance to Ukraine’s government.
“The bitter irony of America’s present predicament is that the very people who cheer for permanent arms shipments to Ukraine also supported the de-industrialization of America,” Vance said in a post on X on Sunday. “The very things you want us to send are things we don’t make enough of.”
Trump’s approach is a dramatic departure from traditional U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, a period spanning the Cold War with the former Soviet Union as well as the rise of Putin. American presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, typically struck a more bellicose tone on the threat posed by an emboldened Russia.
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Putin’s regime has welcomed the overtures from Trump. In statements reported by Russian state media agency TASS, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised Trump as a pragmatist who operates with “common sense.”
“We see that the collective West has begun to partially lose its unity,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Monday.
Democrats and anti-Trump Republican commentators have sharply criticized the administration since the Oval Office meeting, accusing Trump of effectively selling out Ukraine. In a post on his Truth Social platform early Monday, Trump defended himself and insisted he had helped keep much of Ukraine intact.
“The only President who gave none of Ukraine’s land to Putin’s Russia is President Donald J. Trump,” he wrote in the post. “Remember that when the weak and ineffective Democrat’s criticize, and the Fake News gladly puts out anything they say!”
But there is a partisan divide on Ukraine; Gallup recently found that 84% of Democrats have a favorable view of Ukraine, whereas only 54% of Republican poll respondents said the same.
In the wake of the Trump-Zelenskyy spat, a handful of Republican lawmakers defended Ukraine, while most — including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. — said Zelenskyy may have to resign.
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet Friday in the Oval Office.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
The feud between continued Monday, with Trump disparaging his Ukrainian counterpart in a post on social media.
Trump is by no means the first president to aim for a less hostile relationship with Moscow, however. Barack Obama and his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, embarked on a high-profile bid to “reset” relations with Russia. But those efforts largely fell apart after Putin invaded Crimea and seized it from Ukraine in 2014.
The relationship between Biden and Zelenskyy showed signs of strain, too. NBC News has reported that Biden lost his temper with Zelenskyy during a phone call in June 2022, according to four people familiar with the call. Biden raised his voice and said Zelenskyy could afford to show more gratitude for the billions in U.S. military assistance for Kyiv.
Biden and his top diplomats nonetheless worked to rally international support for Kyiv’s resistance to Moscow; the United Kingdom, France and other European allies joined the fight.
The disagreement between Biden and Zelenskyy came in a private phone call — not a public dressing down in the Oval Office. During their meeting, Trump told Zelenskyy he should be much more grateful as the conversation grew more tense, ending with the Ukraine leader leaving the U.S. without signing a minerals deal.
“You got to be more thankful, because, let me tell you, you don’t have the cards,” Trump said.
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