Trump concluded his post by stating, “I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
US President Donald J. Trump Surprises with Statement on Russia and Ukraine
US President Donald J. Trump surprised many on September 23 with a social media post asserting that “Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a war that should have taken a real military power less than a week to win.” He compared Russia to “a paper tiger,” criticized its faltering economy, and suggested that Ukraine can take back its land by military means.
Trump concluded his post by stating: “I wish both countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
Kremlin officials reacted in a subdued manner. During a radio interview, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov quipped: “Russia is in no way a paper tiger, it’s more closely associated with a bear—and there are no paper bears.”
While the Kremlin’s top propagandists expressed outrage over Trump’s “hurtful” comments and fired back with insults, they could not refute his points about Russia’s slow advances in Ukraine, successful attacks against Russian oil refineries (with fuel shortages and queues at gas stations reported even in Moscow), or the state of the Russian economy. These topics have recently been surfacing even on tightly controlled state media.
Kremlin commentators largely dismissed Trump’s words, emphasizing that his rhetoric did not indicate a change in US policy. On his radio show Full Contact, host Vladimir Solovyov grumbled about the insults but admitted: “Trump didn’t say he is taking Ukraine’s side.”
Instead, state media experts framed Trump’s remarks positively, suggesting they showed his willingness to shift responsibility for the conflict onto Europe and Ukraine. While he has promised to continue selling weapons to NATO, Ukraine’s defense has been hindered by the US quietly pausing some arms sales to Europe. Kremlin propagandists regularly insist that Russia can continue its offensive until European support for Ukraine collapses.
Emboldened by this belief, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defense Committee, recently threatened Poland. State media figures often warn European countries that the United States would not defend them in case of direct conflict with Russia and would disregard NATO’s Article 5.
On September 25, after criticizing Trump’s harsh words, Solovyov remarked: “I’m very grateful for the fact that Biden didn’t come to power… objectively, yes, it’s been beneficial to us. From the time Trump was elected, there have been no new sanctions.”
On the TV program The Meeting Place, Gevorg Mirzayan, research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ US and Canadian Studies Institute, dismissively suggested that Trump is Putin’s apprentice who failed his assignment of persuading Ukraine to capitulate and Europe to accept this outcome.
Mirzayan said: “What happened is the most logical conclusion of what came out of the Alaska summit. At the conclusion of the summit, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump agreed on a certain formula for a resolution. What was required of Trump was to make Europe and Ukraine accept it. Trump failed to complete his homework.” He argued that Trump’s insults toward Russia were merely a smokescreen, which is why they were largely ignored by the Kremlin.
On a later broadcast of Full Contact, Solovyov concluded: “Since we are not a paper tiger, but a bear — as Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov correctly noted — then they have a problem in their forest. When they point out, ‘President Trump is very disappointed, displeased and upset by Putin,’ perhaps Trump should be pondering whether Putin is disappointed and upset with him.”