With his pivot on Ukraine, Trump may be washing his hands of the war

Sudden shift comes after having no success bringing Putin to the negotiating table

- David E. Sanger

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meeting US President Donald Trump at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept 23. In his speech to the UN the next day, Mr Zelensky said the conflict with Russia was worsened by the "collapse of international law and the weakness of international institutions".

(PHOTO: AFP)

Eight months into his second term, US President Donald Trump has made a declaration about Ukraine that sounded vaguely like the ones his predecessor Joe Biden used to make.

With the right mix of courage, ingenuity and weapons from Nato, he asserted on Sept 23, Ukraine could force Russia to retreat from the territory it has seized in 3½ years of brutal war.

But scratch the surface, and a deeper desire seemed buried in Mr Trump’s reversal of position during the United Nations meetings in New York this week.

Mr Trump appears to want to wash his hands of the Ukraine conflict, after having no success bringing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, and a dwindling chance of acting as mediator between the two warring parties.

Like many policy declarations by Mr Trump, it is hard to divine his true beliefs, and impossible to assure he will not change position again. He is nothing if not mercurial.

His foreign policy views, former aides say, are more often driven by pique and a sense that he has been disrespected than by strategic analysis.

And his own key advisers seemed taken by surprise by his sudden conclusion that Ukraine, after years of struggle, is suddenly capable of winning back the one-fifth of the country that Mr Putin’s troops now occupy.

On the same afternoon that Mr Trump issued his conclusion on Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio - who is also acting as national security adviser - repeated the administration’s old maxim that the war in Ukraine “cannot end militarily”, predicting that “it will end at a negotiating table”.