Donald Trump’s public siding with Russia over Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine — repeatedly blaming Ukraine for the war and calling President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” — is setting off alarms in Kyiv, where officials fear Trump will try to force a peace deal that grants Russia’s demands.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said on Tuesday of Ukrainian leaders. “You could have made a deal.”
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, say they aren’t worried. Most of them ardently disagree with the idea that Ukraine started the war — but GOP lawmakers said in interviews on Wednesday that the president is simply playing four-dimensional chess with his rhetoric, not actually reorienting America toward Russia and away from democratic European allies. Trump, after all, is a businessman at heart, Republicans told NOTUS, and he’s just trying to get the best leverage as he works to negotiate an end to the war.