Trump chages Direction AGAIN….
Eight months into his second term, President Trump has made a declaration about Ukraine that sounded vaguely like the ones his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., used to make. With the right mix of courage, ingenuity and weapons from NATO, he asserted on Tuesday, Ukraine could force Russia to retreat from the territory it has seized in three and a half years of brutal war.
But scratch the surface, and a deeper desire seemed buried in Mr. Trump’s reversal of position during the U.N. meetings in New York this week. Mr. Trump appears to want to wash his hands of the Ukraine conflict, after having no success bringing President Vladimir V. 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 President Vladimir V. Putin’s troops now occupy….
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Trump has been supporting Ukraine with stronger weapon systems that can strike deeper into Russia….
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Europe alone is not responsible for helping Ukraine bring an end to its war with Russia, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned Thursday.
That is particularly true when considering President Donald Trump’s pledge to halt the fighting, she said in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
“He was the one who promised to stop the killing,” Kallas said. “So it can’t be on us.”
In a Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump wrote that he believed Ukraine “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” He added that this would come with the support of the European Union and NATO, which “can do what they want” with American weapons.
While many European officials welcomed the more supportive shift in tone toward Ukraine, some cautioned that Trump might be suggesting that he intends to pull back American involvement and absolve Washington of responsibility.
There is no NATO without the U.S., said Kallas, the high representative for foreign affairs of the European Commission.
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ISW…Russian Occupation Update, September 25, 2025
- The Russian “Movement of the First” civic youth organization continues to play a key role in Russia’s efforts to indoctrinate and militarize Ukrainian youth by forcibly removing children from occupied territories of Ukraine to Russian re-education and militarization camps.
- Russia is escalating its Russification efforts in occupied Ukraine by physically erasing Ukrainian language from public life.
- Russia is coming close to completing the full integration of the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) into the Russian energy grid.
- Russia is creating a cadre of future nuclear scientists and operators to supplement its efforts to consolidate control of the ZNPP.
- Russian occupation administrations are pursuing cooperation agreements with Russia-friendly states in an effort to legitimize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine within the Russia-aligned global coalition.
- The People’s Republic of China (PRC) may be participating in the illegal export of stolen Ukrainian goods from ports in occupied Crimea.
- Russia continues to tighten its control over the information space in occupied Ukraine by restricting access to all but Russian-approved media and information streams.
- Russia continues efforts to attract Russian citizens to occupied Ukraine as part of a larger resettlement campaign aimed in part at addressing labor shortages resulting from the full-scale invasion.
Daily Kos grunt report for Today….