This was always the plan. Do the best to get both sides to negotiate and then be willing to walk away if you can’t get a deal. It’s pure “Art of the Deal” Trumpism. Basically, he repeats (with pure Trumpian sarcasm) the NeoCon’s fake war narrative and then says, “Great go do it! I’ll even sell you weapons! … at a mark-up!” This should be very sad to watch because it means tens of thousands more Ukrainians will die. But Trump had no choice. He can’t refuse to sell weapons to NATO allies. He can’t convince them to accept Russia’s terms. He also can’t stop the NeoCons in his own party (Lindsey “Grima Wormtongue”¹ Graham) to stop their nonsense that Ukraine can defeat Russia. So … repeat their nonsense to them verbatim. Then walk away!

Dr. Brovkin is a former Harvard professor and one of the world’s leading experts on Soviet and Russian Federation politics. This is a brilliant and correct analysis. (NOTE THE QUOTATION MARKS IN THE TITLE!)

By Vladimir Brovkin

Welcome to Issues of Contemporary Politics with Dr. Brovkin.

Today, my dear subscribers, I’d like to discuss a sensational development, and that is Trump’s post on social media regarding his reversal of course on the war in Ukraine. In fact, the title of my presentation is “Trump’s sensational reversal” in quotation marks. In other words, I will try to argue that this is not a sensational reversal, of course, but let’s get down to the actual words of Mr. Trump and the comments and explanations and interpretations that are buzzing in the world media.

So, the sensational part of Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social is that Ukraine can win the war, that Ukraine can win all the territories back. That is a sensational part. All of a sudden the president announces that there should not be any concessions, the talk about which was going on in the last couple of months—the plan that Ukraine would give up some territories here in Donbas, and then in other territories there would be a compromise and the conflict would be frozen at the fighting lines. All of that is gone.

The next sensational announcement is that Russia was a paper tiger, that Russia couldn’t achieve anything in three and a half years of fighting, and it’s pretty much the same front lines with slight revisions—a few villages here and there. And the next one is that the United States is willing to provide weapons to the European Union, which is strong enough to do whatever they want. Now there was some confusion as to NATO or European Union, but it’s pretty much the same thing: US supplies the weapons, EU pays. NATO can do whatever they want.

Now the prevailing interpretations that I found is that it is a sensational reversal of policy. Many of the critics of President Trump said that this policy reversal is irresponsible, is reckless, and that Trump was a warmonger. I’m not going to name specific commentators; you can easily see most of them on YouTube just as I can. The argument is that this is reckless warmongering.

Another interpretation is that Trump got convinced by the opponents of Russia, by the hawks, by those who have been pushing him in the direction of supporting Ukraine, and that finally he got convinced that Ukraine must be supported. And there are plenty of those—these generals who speak at Fox News, Keith Kellogg and many, many others—who’ve been staunch supporters of Ukraine, who’ve been saying all along that Russia cannot win, that Ukraine must be supported, that in fact Ukraine can win, etc., etc. Now the critics, of course, are now saying that Trump was convinced by the hawks that Russia is losing and that Ukraine can win. So this is their argument.

Some other people are saying that Trump believes the last man he spoke to, that he’s easily influenced, that he’s inconsistent, that he says one thing one day and another thing another day. So that’s the position; this is the critique.

Now, other critics that I respect highly say that Trump reverted to the position of Biden, and now after several months of trying to find a negotiated settlement, he goes back to Biden’s position, which is helping Ukraine as long as it takes, as much as it takes, and continuing the war against so-called Russian aggression.

Now all of these critics, of course, do agree that there is a tremendous jubilation in the camp of Mr. Zelenskyy and of his European backers. Zelenskyy appeared right after his interview with Trump at the United Nations very, very happy, smug and smiling, and complimenting Trump on his genius and his presence, and that he himself is the big difference. In other words, Zelenskyy got what he wanted, which is that Trump gives him the go-ahead to fight Russia and win back all the territories that Ukraine lost in the course of this war.

Now, [Josep] Borrell and the chair of NATO, [Mark] Rutte, and the foreign affairs spokesman for the European Union, [Peter] Stano, they’re all happy and smiling. They finally convinced Trump that Ukraine must fight and must win.

But there’s a big problem with that, and this is where my interpretation is different from others. I think that all of those are misleading, that they are not correct, and that in fact there is not only no reversal of Trump’s policy, but my argument here is that Trump showed remarkable consistency in his approach to the Russia-Ukraine war. And this is why.

Now, the first thing, of course, is that he’s been saying all along, “This is not my war. I will walk away if both sides do not come to an agreement.” These are his words he’s been repeating all along. So now he is walking away. Now he says to the EU, if you want to fight Russia, go ahead. We will sell new weapons. Ukraine may fight. You pay for the weapons. They fight. That’s just fine. But we are not a part of it. So this is a very important ingredient in Trump’s message: he does not commit US forces; he does not commit US direct free help for the Ukrainian regime, for Zelenskyy to continue the war. He basically says, “Europe, if you want it, go ahead.”

Now my other argument, my next argument, is that he’s been consistently saying this all along. In fact, his entire approach has been very, very critical, if not to say condescending and outright unfriendly—not to put it in harsher terms—to the European Union. He has consistently regarded them as loafers who take advantage of the United States.

So he started out from the very beginning of his administration by demanding that NATO must increase its spending by 5%. Now the whole thing, of course, is that they cannot do it. Specialist economists have all showed that this is impossible. So what did they do? The Europeans decided to say, “Yes, daddy,” as Rutte put it, and to kick it out to 10 years. So they agreed to increase spending by 5%, but by 2035. By 2035, Trump is definitely not going to be in office, and who is going to be out there to check if they did it or not? Moreover, some countries flatly refused, such as Spain, and other countries decided that they’re going to put their regular development infrastructure plans as if it is for NATO infrastructure, to try to come across as if they agreed to Trump’s 5% demand of increase.

The second thing is that the European Union and Britain, in the so-called coalition of the willing, came up and pushed for several months this year, 2025, for Trump to agree to support the coalition of the willing. And as [David] Cameron put it in this kind of a grandiose British Empire way, “on the land and in the air and in the sea,” the coalition is going to force Russia to comply, etc., etc., on one condition: the United States had to back this so-called peacekeeping force on the ground and in the air and in the sea. So the plan was very simple: to send a fighting force to scare Russia—that all of NATO will be backing it up—into Ukraine as supposed peacekeepers after forcing Russia to accept a peace ceasefire, and then use the United States to scare Putin into compliance.

And what did President Trump do? He said no. So he says no, he is not going to back the coalition of the willing force. So they got scared; they came to Washington; they again tried to persuade him in the speeches, especially [Emmanuel] Macron and especially [Olaf] Scholz, that Russia should be forced to accept the ceasefire. The result was Trump said no.

Finally, in the last few weeks, we have been moving to a situation when Zelenskyy was beginning to say that difficult decisions must be made. He was beginning to say that he might have to agree to some kind of a compromise. And it is at this point that we have several staged drone incidents. Now I already addressed this issue, and I have no time to devote to this now, but it is absolutely clear now to everyone who has any respect for evidence that the drones in Poland were not sent by Russia, that this was a Ukrainian-staged false flag operation specifically designed to heat up the situation in terms of getting NATO support for Ukraine.

Now, even more difficult to prove was that Russia violated Estonian airspace. In fact, it has been already proven the opposite: Russian airplanes did not violate Estonian airspace. But it was heated up and made into a big deal by the generals who speak at Fox News, that Russia must be stopped, Russian aggression wouldn’t go unpunished, that Russia should shoot down airplanes, etc.

It is in this context that President Trump announces his so-called reversal. Now basically, I think what pushed Trump into this response is that he received a snub from the EU and from the UK in the voting on Palestine. The same day that he was wined and dined and seen by the king and all this pompous affair in London, what happened is that Britain recognized Palestine. And one could see that Trump was visibly upset; he was very, very upset that the UK, and then France, and then Macron sitting together with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia leading the debate in the United Nations recognizing Palestine, and it is the United States virtually alone—backed by, oh, such big Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, these countries that want the US to be used in their fight against Russia—so they are the only ones who backed the United States. The whole world saw the United States isolated in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian state and continuing to insist on the Israeli position.

So I think that Trump felt betrayed by the European Union, and his response is, “Well, you do it.” And in this, I see a complete consistency and his real walking away from this conflict.

And finally, a last word about the effect that that would have on Zelenskyy. I think, in fact, it was a disservice to Zelenskyy because now Zelenskyy is compelled to continue the fight. It is no longer an option to walk away, because everybody—all these nationalist commanders of detachments, the Bandera detachments in the army that he does not control—now they would say, “Look, even President Trump confirms and supports our fighting to the very last inch of Ukrainian territory.” In other words, by this declaration, Trump destroyed any opportunity for Zelenskyy to conclude any peace deal, because he would now be pushed by the nationalists. In other words, Trump actually forced Zelenskyy to fight to the bitter end.

And finally, my conclusion: I think Trump knows Russia is not a paper tiger. I think the Pentagon specialists—and there are some that know exactly what Russian military capabilities are—are telling him that this is, of course, not true. So if that is the case, then he’s pushing Zelenskyy to fight on is, in fact, in a way, he’s pushing him to fight on and to be defeated. Trump’s walking away actually shows that he knows that NATO is a paper tiger, that the EU has no army, no money, no public support, and no weapons in order to continue what they want, to escalate conflict with Russia.

So from that perspective, my dear friends, I think Trump is remarkably consistent, and he is walking away, which is a smart move. Thank you.

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The moniker “Grima Wormtongue” is a long-standing political insult used by critics to describe Senator Lindsey Graham. The comparison is a reference to the Lord of the Rings character who acted as a corrupting influence and traitorous advisor to King Théoden of Rohan.

The insult gained prominence due to Graham’s changing relationship with Donald Trump, shifting from a sharp critic to one of his most loyal defenders. The comparison suggests that Graham is a sycophant who manipulates or is manipulated by Trump.

Key aspects of the comparison:

• Initial criticism of Trump: Early in Trump’s 2016 campaign, Graham was one of his most vocal Republican opponents, even calling him a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot”.
• Later support for Trump: Following Trump’s election, Graham became a staunch ally. Critics viewed this reversal as opportunistic, fueling the Grima Wormtongue comparison.
• Political sycophancy: The label is often used to characterize Graham’s fervent defense of Trump and his alignment with the former president’s political positions.

The comparison is widely used in online forums and on social media, often in response to Graham’s public statements.