Introducing Trump's evolving stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict: Dive into the latest updates on Trump's shifting views regarding the ongoing crisis in Russia and Ukraine. Stay informed and up to date with his changing perspective on this pressing international issue.
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00:49Wow, I hope he wasn't disappointed.
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00:54Yeah, the weather's been all over the place, but I'm glad you had a good time.
00:58Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.
01:00I'm Ashley Lopez.
01:01I cover politics.
01:03I'm Greg Myrie.
01:04I cover national security.
01:05And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.
01:09And today our focus is on the United States' role in the war in Ukraine.
01:13Greg, so Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine started more than three years ago.
01:18The U.S. has been supporting Ukraine with weapons since the very start of that.
01:22Can you catch us up on where this war is now and how involved the U.S. is at this point?
01:28Yeah, Ashley.
01:29Today is a really good typical example.
01:32Russia fired about 400 drones and 18 missiles into Ukraine, many of them at the capital, Kyiv.
01:39Russian troops are hundreds of miles away from Kyiv.
01:42There's no way they're going to get to the city or take it.
01:45So most of these missiles and drones are at civilian targets.
01:49It seems like it's really an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine and sap the morale of civilians.
01:55And many of these civilians are sleeping in their basements or in the subways during these attacks that last most of the night or all of the night.
02:03Now, there's also the front line, which stretches for hundreds of miles.
02:07Russia does have the upper hand.
02:09It is advancing, but very slowly and at a very high cost.
02:13So Russia is bigger.
02:14It has more resources, troops and firepower.
02:17Ukraine is hanging on.
02:19But there's real uncertainty for Ukraine about how it will keep getting weapons.
02:24So, Greg, how would you describe U.S. policy towards Ukraine right now?
02:29Because Trump has been on again, off again, feeling bad about Zelensky, good about Zelensky, bad about Putin, not so bad about Putin.
02:36So where do things stand and how much more military support does Ukraine need from the U.S. to survive?
02:44Well, Mara, Ukraine needs a lot of support.
02:47It needs to be ongoing.
02:48And it's just not clear where it's coming from right now with all this uncertainty coming out of the Trump administration.
02:53That big package that the Biden administration approved last year is running out.
02:58It was already running low.
02:59And then the Pentagon announced it was pausing some weapons to Ukraine as part of a worldwide review of foreign military aid.
03:07And then Trump has stepped into the fray and say, no, he's not pausing support.
03:12But the president and his administration are just not offering a clear explanation of what happened or what they might be doing next.
03:20Now, Trump is sounding more consistently critical of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
03:26He said this week that he's very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless, that Putin is not treating human beings in the right way.
03:34And he's even used a bad word or two.
03:36So from a U.S. perspective, it sounds like Trump is changing his tune a little bit.
03:43But imagine how this probably sounds to Vladimir Putin.
03:47He has not accepted Trump's proposed ceasefire.
03:50He's not offered any concessions and is still making all these hardline demands.
03:55And he's greatly escalated the air war since Trump came into office.
03:59So he seems to be testing Trump in all these ways.
04:02And Trump sounds a little more critical, but he hasn't committed any concrete actions.
04:07So from his perspective, the Trump administration just seems very, very soft on Russia.
04:13That makes me wonder what the role of Congress could be here.
04:15Like, how much support is there among members of Congress to do more?
04:20I mean, things like maybe sanctions on Russia or giving Ukraine more air defense.
04:25Well, there is a lot of support among Congress, much more so, it seems, in the administration.
04:30Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, he's been pushing a sanctions bill.
04:36He says there's more than 80 senators.
04:38So obviously, this has strong bipartisan support.
04:41And this would sanction countries buying Russian oil.
04:45China, India would certainly be included in that group.
04:50But it's not even if this passed, Trump says he's thinking about it now.
04:54Again, some movement, but no real commitment.
04:57But that's a long term thing.
04:58It would hurt Russia's economy, but it's not the kind of thing you would expect to change
05:03behavior overnight.
05:04The one thing we're not hearing is any real push in Congress or the administration for
05:11a new weapons package.
05:13Ukraine is making more and more of its own weapons.
05:15And in particular, it's doing very well in making its own drones that are quite effective.
05:21Europe says it's going to do more, and it is.
05:24But there's still a lot of systems, and particularly air defenses, that these are U.S. systems and
05:30you need U.S. missiles to go with them.
05:32And there's not really an alternative for Ukraine.
05:34Mara, how do you think President Trump views Ukraine?
05:38Well, I think he's been all over the map on this.
05:40But there has been a through line.
05:42He has been very favorable towards Putin.
05:45He often has parroted Kremlin talking points.
05:50He has not disguised his dislike for Zelensky.
05:53He has blamed Zelensky.
05:55He's called him a dictator.
05:57He's blamed him for the war.
05:58His animus towards Ukraine goes all the way back to the first term.
06:02When he pressured Zelensky to open an investigation of Joe Biden, Zelensky didn't do that.
06:09Trump was pretty angry at him.
06:11And that pressure campaign led to Trump's first impeachment.
06:14So, in general, he's been seen as somebody who's favorable to Putin for a variety of reasons.
06:21But lately, things seem to have changed a bit.
06:23He's gotten frustrated and impatient with Putin.
06:26He's had some pretty good phone calls with Zelensky.
06:28Zelensky's been happy about the conversations they've had about U.S. military support for Ukraine.
06:34So I think with almost everything Trump, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
06:39He changes his views and opinions pretty fast.
06:42There doesn't seem to be a through line of geopolitical strategy to any of this.
06:48I mean, Amara, whether or not geopolitics is sort of the calculus here, we can definitely say that Trump does have MAGA in mind.
06:54I mean, how do you think his supporters feel looking at this news and seeing possible continued U.S. involvement in Ukraine's war?
07:02Well, I think the Republican coalition is split on this.
07:05In terms of the MAGA base, there is both a big isolationist trend in the MAGA base.
07:11There are people like Tucker Carlson and people like Steve Bannon who think we have no business doing anything in Ukraine.
07:19There also is a strain of MAGA that sees Vladimir Putin as simpatico, that he is a supporter of cultural conservative stands.
07:27But I think in general, the MAGA base follows President Trump.
07:31You saw this right before the Iran attacks.
07:34A lot of parts of the MAGA base didn't like the idea of President Trump getting involved in the Middle East, but he did it and they quieted down.
07:42So I think in the end, he has a pretty free hand here in terms of his base.
07:47They're not going to revolt against him.
07:48But there's no doubt that one of the most important things he ran on was that he was going to keep the United States out of forever foreign wars.
07:57And maybe now that's just being defined as so long as they're not U.S. boots on the ground, we're not involved.
08:03Yeah.
08:03All right.
08:04Well, we're going to take a quick break.
08:05More in a moment.
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09:16And we're back.
09:23And I wonder what you both think of this.
09:24So during the campaign, then-candidate Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration, which is very similar to what he said about the ongoing war in the Middle East.
09:35I mean, would it be fair to compare Trump's attitude toward Ukraine to his attitude toward the war between Israel and Hamas and Gaza?
09:42Well, I think it's fair up to a certain point.
09:46Both of these things were things that Trump said would be easy-peasy to resolve.
09:50And they both turned out to be much, much harder.
09:53And he has touted himself as a great dealmaker.
09:57And he hasn't been able to make a deal to stop the war in Ukraine or in Gaza.
10:03And he's actually expressed frustration on this about both of these conflicts.
10:07So I do think this has been a real lesson in real-world geopolitics where you can't just bluff and bluster your way to something that you call a deal.
10:16Yeah, and I think Trump never really expresses an appreciation for the long-tortured history in both of these places.
10:25I've reported from both of them pretty regularly the past few years.
10:29And whenever you start a conversation with anybody, whether it's an Israeli, a Palestinian, or somebody in Ukraine, they talk about this generational trauma of what they've gone through, what their parents have gone through, what their grandparents have gone through.
10:44One relationship between the leaders or one phone call or one weekend meeting is not going to sort them out.
10:51Getting to a ceasefire, stopping the shooting, that would be a big, important achievement.
10:56But then beyond that, you have multiple steps to try to get to some sort of lasting, enduring peace and resolve these conflicts in a permanent way.
11:04Yeah, and what we haven't heard from Trump, for instance, is does he believe that Ukraine should be a sovereign state and decide for itself whether it wants to be allied with Russia or Europe?
11:14He doesn't seem to have a kind of geopolitical understanding or strategy for either of these conflicts.
11:20And as Greg said, these are not just two schoolyard kids fighting on a playground.
11:25Sometimes Trump has actually used that metaphor.
11:28These are people with deep, long-standing grievances and national goals.
11:33All right.
11:34Well, what will you both be watching for as things continue, Greg?
11:38Yeah, I still keep a pretty close watch on the daily scale of these Russian air attacks.
11:43For much of the war, a typical night might be a case where Russia fires several dozen drones and missiles, and that'd be pretty substantial.
11:53Beginning of this year, we would sell those numbers go up to maybe 100 a night.
11:58Now we're seeing three, four, 500 nights.
12:01A couple nights ago, Russia fired more than 700 drones into Ukraine overnight.
12:07This kept people in cities up all night long.
12:11Now, you know, is that something Russian can sustain and shows that they're really not interested in finding a ceasefire but are trying to overwhelm Ukraine?
12:19And also keep an eye on the front line fighting because it is the summer fighting season.
12:24It's warm.
12:25You can move around pretty easily.
12:26It's dry there, much harder to move around and fight in the winter.
12:30So I'll be looking at both of those things, plus how is Ukraine going to keep getting weapons?
12:35It is running low.
12:37It's going to need to be resupplied from the U.S.
12:39And if not from the U.S., it's really not clear where they're going to get them.
12:43Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm looking for.
12:45Does the president ask Congress to approve the money for more military aid to Ukraine?
12:50As Greg said earlier, the Biden-approved military aid is running out probably by the end of the summer.
12:56And that really matters.
12:58Also, whether the president agrees and gives Lindsey Graham the go-ahead to push the bill to increase sanctions on Russia.
13:07Yeah, lots of open questions.
13:08All right.
13:09Well, let's leave it there for today.
13:11I'm Ashley Lopez.
13:12I cover politics.
13:13I'm Greg Myrie.
13:14I cover national security.
13:15And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.
13:18And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.
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