Ukrainians have reacted cautiously to U.S. President Donald Trump’s unexpected shift in stance on their war with Russia
Ukrainians were cautious Wednesday in their response to a surprise pivot in U.S. President Donald Trump’s views on their prospects for defeating Russia’s invasion, after he said they could win the three-year war and retake land captured by Moscow.
Russian officials, meanwhile, said developments on the battlefield showed Ukraine is unable to reclaim the occupied territory and dismissed Trump’s description of Russia as a “paper tiger.”
“Russia isn’t a tiger, it’s more associated with a bear,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “There are no paper bears. Russia is a real bear.”
Some Ukrainians expressed hope that Trump’s words would be backed up by concrete support for Ukraine in Washington, while others were wary about the American president’s unpredictability.
“We need such support from America, from Donald Trump, and we hope that this will continue in the future — the same rhetoric, the same attitude toward us, toward Ukraine, and toward the war in Ukraine,” Olha Voronina, a 66-year-old Kyiv resident, said.
Volodymyr Cheslavskyi, a 48-year-old soldier recovering from a war wound, said he considered Trump to be more interested in making money than helping Ukraine, and kept people guessing about his true intentions with contradictory statements.
“He can say different things each time — he supports Ukraine, or he does not support Ukraine,” Cheslavskyi told The Associated Press in St. Michael’s Square in the Ukrainian capital.
Anna Khudimova, 43, said she believed her country’s armed forces could prevail on the battlefield against Russia’s bigger army.
“But we cannot do it without the help of NATO, without the support of Europe,” she said. “If Trump influences the situation, then perhaps this can be realistic.
