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During the 2024 presidential campaign, many Democrats — and quite a few Republicans — darkly predicted President Donald Trump would hand Ukraine to Russian strong man Vladimir Putin on a silver platter if elected.
In his desperation to get a quick deal, the argument went, Trump would give President Putin everything he wanted, and Ukraine would revert to being a Russian vassal state. Democracy would die and an emboldened Putin would start eyeing NATO members as he put the Soviet Union back together.
None of this has come to pass.
To be honest, the situation in Ukraine has not gone as Trump expected during the first 18 months of his second term. As he has often said, he expected Ukraine to be the easiest to solve of the Biden-era messes he inherited — and it has turned out to be the most difficult.
NATO’S EASTERN FLANK RACES TO REARM AS TRUMP PRESSURE EXPOSES WESTERN EUROPE’S DEFENSE GAP
Trump finds new leverage in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. (Kacper Pempel; Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
But the president has been patient and kept lines of communication with both Kyiv and Moscow open. His administration estimates it has spent more time on Ukraine than any other issue to date.
Their persistence may be bearing fruit as Ukraine has started to claw back some of the territory Russia took in Donbas in the early days of the war. Moreover, reports from inside Russia are increasingly pessimistic about Putin’s chances for victory.
On June 4, the House passed a bill authorizing an additional $1.3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, as well as an additional $8 billion in long-term loans for military purchases, legislation that was unanimously supported by Democrats as well as 18 Republicans.
Before Congress reverts to President Joe Biden’s failed Ukraine policy of as much as it takes “for as long as it takes,” we need a dispassionate assessment of what actually happened in Ukraine under Trump.
UKRAINE’S BATTLEFIELD IS TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE OF NATO
The Trump-Zelenskyy relationship appeared to have started badly with the infamous January 2025 Oval Office meeting in which the president and vice president flipped the Biden script and instead of coddling and lionizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, challenged him to recognize his real position. They made it clear they were not going to have the American taxpayer on the hook for a losing effort.
To his credit, Zelenskyy seems to have taken this message to heart and dramatically accelerated the development and production of long-range attack drones that can penetrate deep into Russian territory and threaten overstretched resupply lines to Crimea.
These ingenious weapons have reversed the Russian tide and are now coveted by nations around the world — while providing Ukraine with a welcome source of income. The Ukrainian campaign against Russian energy infrastructure and high-end military assets such as strategic bombers and warships has been a strong success.
Since Trump took office, U.S. military aid to Ukraine has continued but at the expense of European allies, who have been purchasing weapons from the U.S. for transfer to Ukraine under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative. Zelenskyy’s most recent request for assistance from the U.S. is also new, as he has asked for the licenses to start manufacturing PAC-3 interceptors for the Patriot missile defense systems. U.S. production is about 60 interceptors a month while Ukraine estimates it alone needs about 70 a month.
Their persistence may be bearing fruit as Ukraine has started to claw back some of the territory Russia took in Donbas in the early days of the war. Moreover, reports from inside Russia are increasingly pessimistic about Putin’s chances for victory.
While America will always be the preferred source for high-end weapons, we are not producing enough for our own use, let alone our allies. Such a co-production arrangement with Ukraine could make sense if sensitive U.S technology can be reliably safeguarded and a portion of the proceeds goes back to America.
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If successful, this arrangement could serve as a model for other co-production agreements, not only with Ukraine but also with NATO members. The U.S. can thus continue to be the security partner of choice without putting our own security at risk.
Trump thus goes to the upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, with a growing success story on Ukraine. The meeting will be a welcome opportunity for the alliance to build on this progress by redoubling their efforts to have Europe take the lead on Europe’s defenses. Trump has committed $1.5 trillion to the biggest U.S. military budget in history and the large NATO economies need to follow suit to send the message to Putin that he cannot compete with NATO’s strength.
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Things do not seem to be going well in Russia. Reports of shortages of conscripts for the war effort, Soviet-era child labor camps reopening and a pending economic meltdown suggest Putin’s victory in Ukraine might not be as inevitable as he would have us think.
Rather than reverting to the failed Biden policy that dragged this war on for more than four years with no end in sight, to finally get to a satisfactory negotiated settlement and deter Putin from further aggression, President Trump should double down on supporting Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself, and bolstering NATO’s resolve to defend Europe.
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Victoria Coates is Vice President of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy.
