US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Ukraine has the strength to recover all territory lost to Russia, marking a sharp shift from his earlier calls for Kyiv to consider concessions.
President said Ukraine could “fight and win” back its original borders with the support of the European Union and NATO, according to a post on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday.
Trump wrote that Russia had been fighting “aimlessly for three and a half years” in a war that “should have taken a real military power less than a week to win.” He said this had made Russia look like a “paper tiger.”
He added that economic pressure on Moscow was growing. “When the people living in Moscow, and all of the great cities, towns, and districts all throughout Russia, find out what is really going on with this war … Ukraine would be able to take back their country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that,” Trump said.
The president also said the United States would continue supplying weapons to NATO. “We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!” he wrote.
“In any event, I wish both countries well,” Trump added.
However, in a meeting with French president Emanuel Macron, Donald Trump reiterated his recent comments on Truth Social that Ukraine has the potential to win back all the territory it has lost to Russia in the three and a half years since the most recent war in the region began.
Trump said that Ukraine’s ability to fight back might prove that Russia is a “paper tiger”. “I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back,” the president added.