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Putin took Trump for granted. He’s going to pay for his mistake.

After the president’s startling, welcome shift on Ukraine, there’s more to do.

By MAX BOOT

Washington Post
July 14, 2025

President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday about aid to Ukraine proves once again that he is nothing if not unpredictable.

If Trump has been consistent about one thing throughout his tumultuous, decade-long political career, it is support for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and skepticism of Ukraine. In 2014, Trump praised Putin’s illegal seizure of Crimea — a prelude to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine — as “so smart.” Trump’s anti-Ukraine animus reached its nadir in February when he engaged in an Oval Office shouting match with President Volodymyr Zelensky. That led to a temporary pause on U.S. aid to Kyiv and could easily have signaled that the United States was abandoning Ukraine altogether.

And yet there Trump was in the Oval Office on Monday, meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and sounding a very different tone. The president announced that the United States would sell to European allies “top of the line weapons” that will then be provided to Ukraine, and he threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Russia and its trade partners if Putin does not reach a deal to end the war within 50 days.