Donald Trump Says Things that Russia Wants to Hear

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed strong confidence that Ukraine would never become a member of NATO, a position that aligns closely with that of the Kremlin. While NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described Ukraine’s path toward the alliance as “irreversible,” Trump sees it differently.

In an interview with Time, Trump claimed that Ukraine was responsible for triggering the full-scale war with Russia.

“I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining NATO,” the President says. The negotiated peace he is pursuing would hand Vladimir Putin some 20% of Ukrainian territory. “Crimea will stay with Russia,” Trump said. 

This isn't the first time the Republican leader has made such remarks. In February, he blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for provoking the conflict by promising NATO membership to Ukraine. Trump said that as soon as he heard Biden’s promise, he thought, “Now you’re going to have a war.”

Trump previously stated that Moscow would never agree to Ukraine joining NATO. In early April, he claimed that even before Vladimir Putin came to power, Russia had ruled out such a possibility. Former Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s special representative Keith Kellogg have echoed this view, calling Ukraine’s NATO membership unrealistic.

These ideas were reflected in a peace proposal delivered by the Trump administration to Ukraine during talks in Paris on April 17. The proposal included abandoning NATO ambitions and recognizing Russia’s control over Crimea. The issue was scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of foreign ministers from Ukraine, the U.S., and European countries in London, but it was ultimately addressed at a lower level.

The Kremlin noted the convergence of views between the current U.S. administration and Russia.

“We have heard from Washington at various levels that Ukraine’s NATO membership was off the table. That, of course, is something we welcome,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. He also referenced President Putin’s repeated assertions that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were one of the root causes of the conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky argued that Ukraine’s integration into NATO was the most beneficial outcome for both the U.S. and EU. Without NATO protection, Zelensky said, Ukraine would need more soldiers, and the West would have to support them financially. NATO’s Rutte affirmed Ukraine’s eventual membership, though he noted that joining the alliance was not guaranteed under any peace agreement.

Crimea, along with the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, were incorporated into Russia following referendums in 2014 and 2022. Ukraine and its Western allies rejected the referendums as illegitimate and consider the moves to be illegal annexations.

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Crimea  is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine. To the east, the Crimean Bridge, constructed in 2018, spans the Strait of Kerch, linking the peninsula with Krasnodar Krai in Russia. The Arabat Spit, located to the northeast, is a narrow strip of land that separates the Syvash lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to the west lies Romania and to the south is Turkey. The population is 2.4 million, and the largest city is Sevastopol. The region, internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian occupation since 2014.