America’s U-turn: As demanding with Ukraine as it is kind to Russia

While Europe reiterated its support for Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the summit in London on Sunday, the Trump administration reaffirmed its U-turn on foreign policy, breaking away from its traditional continental allies and adopting Russia’s positions. On the eve of the U.S. president’s speech to both chambers of Congress on Tuesday, and with his rebuke of the Ukrainian president still reverberating in the Oval Office, the White House has once again cast doubt on the good faith of the leader of the country occupied by Russia.

At the Friday debacle — and also before and after — Trump was as demanding of Zelenskiy as he was kind to Russian President Vladimir Putin. While Trump demands that the former show more gratitude to the United States and accuses him of not wanting peace, he also claims that the latter has never deceived him and that he has suffered, like himself, from slanderous investigations into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Hours later, before flying to Florida for a weekend of golf, the president insisted that his Ukrainian counterpart “doesn’t have to stand there and say about, ‘Putin this, Putin that,’ all negative things. He’s got to say, ‘I want to make peace.”

In London, Zelenskiy declared himself optimistic about the chances of relaunching contacts and signing the economic agreement that was shelved after the White House showdown. “I think our relationship will continue,” he said at a press conference. But he also criticized the context in which the clash took place, during a long session of questions from journalists in the Oval Office at the beginning of the meeting when a press conference was already planned for after the meeting. “I don’t think it’s right for these kinds of conversations to be completely open… the format of what happened, I don’t think it brought anything positive or additional to any of us as partners.”

As the U.S. administration stepped up its attacks on the Ukrainian president, the Pentagon, headed by former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, on Sunday ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive operations against Russia, The New York Times reported. Citing one current and two former senior officials, the paper said the decision, taken before Friday’s Oval Office meeting, was part of a series of steps to persuade Putin to come to the negotiating table.

The duration and scope of the measure is unclear, the outlet notes, adding that Hegseth’s instructions are part of a broader assessment of all operations against Russia. Maintaining intelligence access to Russian systems, The New York Times adds, is crucial not only to understanding the Kremlin’s intentions when negotiations begin, but also to gain an idea of internal debates in Moscow about what its priority demands are and what it is willing to give up.

Trump insists that he is not taking sides either way ― this statement in itself already represents a break with the United States’ unconditional support for Kyiv during the three years of war ― and that what he wants is peace as soon as possible. But his calls for a quick ceasefire with no apparent conditions for Moscow and with demands on Ukraine, leave the invaded country at the mercy of the invader. All the more so when representatives of his government have pointed to the possibility that the president may decide to suspend the U.S. aid still pending delivery.

“Putin wins with every fight between Washington and Kyiv,” says Dan Fried, a former European adviser in Barack Obama’s administration and now at the American think tank Atlantic Council. “While the West negotiates or confronts each other, Putin becomes increasingly arrogant in his demands. Trump risks playing into the Russian’s hands.”

The Republican team is trying to defend him by arguing that Trump is only trying to get the Kremlin tenant to agree to negotiate. He has so far resisted this, believing that the war is going in his favor and that Kyiv’s Western allies will sooner or later tire and divide. In an interview on ABC’s This Week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “the only way to end the war is for Putin to sit down and negotiate. Right now, President Trump is the only person who can do that. He may set impossible conditions. We don’t know. But he has to sit down at the table. You’re not going to get it if you insult him, if you confront him.”

Distant postures

For the moment, neither the White House nor the Republicans are showing signs of softening their stance. Rubio himself acknowledged in his interview that he has not had any contact with Zelenskiy since Friday. Trump, who has not held any official event this weekend, shared a comment on his social networks that defended his position as “genius.” The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, hinted that if the Ukrainian president does not give in and come back to the negotiating table gratefully, it will take someone else to lead that country to do it.

White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz insisted on Sunday that Washington wants a permanent peace between Moscow and Kyiv. Both sides would have to make concessions: Ukraine, by definitively giving up part of the territory occupied by its enemy; Russia, by accepting the security guarantees offered by Europe. And he made it clear that the Republican administration is very doubtful that it can collaborate with Zelenskiy to achieve this, especially after Friday’s clash.

“We need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians, and end this war,” Waltz, the man who announced to Zelenskiy that he had to leave the White House after that confrontation, said in an interview with CNN. He added: “If it becomes apparent that President Zelensky’s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands,” the White House national security adviser stressed.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CBS that there was no sign of resuming the economic agreement that Zelenskiy was going to sign to share the exploitation of Ukraine’s natural resources with the United States. Washington claimed that this agreement would link both economies and would offer an interest in defending the attacked country. “I think we have to see if the Ukrainian president wants to proceed. What’s the use in having an economic agreement that’s going to be rendered moot if he wants the fighting to continue?” the senior official asked.

The next big clue about the direction of American foreign policy will come Tuesday, in Trump’s address to Congress. It will no doubt be very different from the one he delivered in 2017, fresh from his first term in office. Eight years ago, Trump repeated a phrase used by his predecessors for decades: “We strongly support NATO.” If he does so again this time it will be a surprise. His right-hand man and new best friend, the tech oligarch Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, this weekend posted his support for an X user who said the United States should leave NATO and the UN. “I agree,” he replied.

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