Reginald Johnson
In a policy
change that potentially has grave implications for the world, Donald Trump has
reversed course on Ukraine.
The Financial Times is reporting that sources
familiar with a phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President
Volodomyr Zelensky last month indicated that Trump is now in favor of sending
long-range offensive missiles to Ukraine and encouraged the Ukrainian leader to
use them to hit targets deep inside Russia.
In an interview with the BBC, the author of the Financial
Times report, Christopher Miller, recounted the conversation as he heard it
from the sources.
Trump asked
Zelensky that if the US provided long-range missiles to Ukraine, “Can you hit
Moscow? Can you hit St. Petersburg, too?”
Zelensky replied, “Absolutely. We can if you give us
the weapons.”
Trump said he supported the idea of sending the
missiles so “Russia can feel the pain for its invasion” and also push them to
the negotiating table.
Trump’s
comments backing the idea of sending long-range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep
inside Russia represent a 360 degree shift in policy from what Trump had been
saying throughout the 2024 presidential campaign and early in his
administration this year following his reelection.
Previously he
said repeatedly that he wanted to settle the Ukraine war quickly and he had not
indicated any willingness to send more lethal weaponry to Ukraine to perpetuate
the conflict. Trump had criticized former President Joseph Biden for supporting
Ukraine in its war against Russia and said the conflict never would’ve happened
if he had been president.
Early this year after his inauguration, Trump
promised to work out a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a peace deal. There have been several efforts to bring that about
but there’s been no resolution. Trump had also refused to sign off on new
weapons shipments being sent to Ukraine.
But in recent
weeks Trump has been vocally criticizing Putin saying that the Russian leader
was not willing to settle on a peace agreement and had undermined the peace
process by approving missile and drone strikes against Ukraine, including
against the capital, Kiev.
On Monday, Trump had a long press conference at the
White House sitting with the NATO general secretary in which he stated again that
he was upset with Putin and was now prepared to send defensive Patriot missiles
to Ukraine to protect that country against incoming Russian missile and drone
attacks. He also announced that he would impose steep tariffs on Russia.
But he did not indicate during a press conference
that he was prepared to send long-range missiles to Ukraine. Now the Financial
Times report indicates that the president has adopted a position of being
aggressive in the Ukraine war similar to the policy the Biden administration had
taken, a policy which Trump and many conservative
media voices had criticized.
The shift by Trump is deeply troubling and his
willingness to now send offensive weaponry to Ukraine puts the entire world at
risk in the same way that Biden’s policy put the world at risk. The flip-flop
by Trump exposes him (again) as an extremely dishonest person who apparently
was simply playing politics during the 2024 campaign, trying to tap into antiwar
sentiment among many voters.
To the
delight of many of his supporters during the campaign, Trump bragged about how
he could settle the Ukraine war in short order, at one point saying that he
could settle it with a phone call “in a half hour.” At no point during the
campaign did he ever indicate that he would be willing to change his position
and send more lethal weaponry to Ukraine to perpetuate the war.
Trump’s new and dangerous policy on Ukraine must be criticized widely by people on both the left and the right. It’s time for Democrats, in particular, to stop hemming and hawing about the Ukraine war and demand that it end. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million people, have died. For what?
Trump’s remarks about “hitting Moscow” are provocative and undermine chances for peace.
Those
comments and a move to send more long-range missiles to Ukraine will be seen as
an escalation of the war by Putin and Russian leaders.
Donald Trump
has just made the world a lot less safe.
