Experts say Donald Trump has a poor understanding of the history and causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Analysts believe these misconceptions and what observers identify as Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, despite occasional criticism, have led to U.S. peace proposals that favor Russia and will cause Ukraine to face a new invasion.
Trump Gives His Views On Why Russia Invaded Ukraine
In an interview with Time magazine on April 22, 2025, the president was asked, “Should Ukraine give up any hope of ever joining NATO?” Trump replied by blaming Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 on Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, even though NATO had spurned the country’s entry for almost two decades.
“I don’t think they’ll ever be able to join NATO,” he said. “I think that’s been—from day one, I think that’s been, that’s I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining NATO. If that weren’t brought up, there would have been a much better chance that it wouldn’t have started.” (Emphasis added.)
Harvard University professor Serhii Plokhy, the leading historian on Russian-Ukrainian relations, details why Trump’s assertion on how the war in Ukraine started is wrong. “Russia’s threats to take over the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine go back to the times of Boris Yeltsin,” said Plokhy. “Putin acted on those threats in 2003 trying to take over Ukraine’s Tuzla Island off the shores of the Crimea.”
“The annexation of the Crimea in 2014 was explained by the threat from NATO, which allegedly planned to establish naval bases on the peninsula,” notes Plokhy. “In reality, it was a response to the Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity and determination to sign an association agreement with the European Union. By launching a war on Ukraine, Russia was not stopping NATO, which had refused to admit the country back in 2008 but was precluding the ‘escape’ of a former imperial subject from Russia’s sphere of influence.”
In The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, Plokhy provides an account of the history leading up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He writes that Russia’s strategy for many years—up to the present—has been to control Ukraine, disarm its military and choose a leadership to Putin’s liking.
“Trump’s contention that Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO ‘caused the war to start’ is a claim that is often made, but one that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” according to Syracuse University professor Brian Taylor, author of Russian Politics: A Very Short Introduction. “Given that there was no serious prospect of Ukraine joining NATO between 2008 and 2022, it’s hard to see how Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO at some point in the future caused the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Nothing had happened in the previous 14 years to make it likely that Ukraine could join NATO anytime soon.”
“I think most specialists on Russia and Ukraine agree that Putin’s key motive for the full-scale invasion was his desire to restore Russian political control over Ukraine—it wasn’t about this or that piece of territory,” said Taylor. “This reflects Putin’s oft-stated belief that Ukraine is not a separate nation and that it is an artificial state.”
“Putin was motivated by imperial ideas about Ukraine, not by any fears of a security threat to Russia from NATO,” he said. “It’s worth noting that Russia has literally thousands of nuclear weapons to deter an attack on Russian territory. It’s also worth noting that Putin seems untroubled by Finland joining NATO in 2023, even though they share a lengthy land border. In fact, Russia has moved troops away from the Finnish border to fight in Ukraine.”
Other Controversial Trump Statements On Russia And Ukraine That Experts Dispute
Trump has made other controversial statements on Russia and the war. “Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Norway’s prime minister, Trump was asked what concessions Russia has ‘offered up thus far to get to the point where you’re closer to peace,’” reported The Hill. Trump responded, “Stopping the war, stopping from taking the whole country, pretty big concession.”
“Putin hasn’t taken Ukraine because he can’t,” wrote Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army and author of The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire. He credits Ukrainians for their “courage and resilience.” He adds, “To suggest ‘not taking all of Ukraine’ is a Russian concession is ludicrous.”
Data from the Institute for the Study of War and other sources indicate that Russia has suffered approximately 900,000 casualties (killed or wounded) since the invasion began but has not gained a significant amount of Ukrainian territory since April 2022.
There is no near-term threat Russia will overrun the Ukrainian Army if the current limited amount of U.S. aid ends, given Ukraine’s domestic armament production and assistance from European countries. “The front line is not about to collapse,” wrote Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has made several trips to the front lines during the war. “Despite AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] being largely pressed out of Kursk, the overall situation from Pokrovsk to Kupyansk improved. The implication being that Ukraine is not in a desperate situation requiring a rushed ceasefire under unfavorable terms.”
Ukraine has adapted to Russia’s manpower advantage by building the world’s most formidable drone units, turning Russian attempts to advance into killing fields. “Drones have indeed transformed the battlefield in Ukraine by providing accessible and affordable capabilities at a scale that did not previously exist,” according to an analysis by Stacie Pettyjohn of the Center for a New American Security for War on the Rocks. “They are making it difficult to concentrate forces, achieve surprise and conduct offensive operations.”
Conservatives Criticize One-Sided U.S. Deal Favoring Russia
Ukraine’s allies in Europe and conservative supporters of Ukraine have criticized the White House concessions to Russia in the proposed peace deal that Trump has urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign. Under the terms that have surfaced in the press, the United States would recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia would remain in the parts of Ukraine it now occupies, sanctions on Russia would be lifted and Ukraine would not be permitted to join NATO or receive any security guarantees that would help prevent renewed military action by Moscow.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Trump ally, blasted the proposed deal on X.com. “As for Ukraine—what do they get after three years of heroic resistance against a brutal and unprovoked invasion?” asked Johnson. “What is their reward for the appalling sacrifices they have made—for the sake, as they have endlessly been told, of freedom and democracy around the world? . . . What is there in this deal that can realistically stop a third Russian invasion? Nothing. If we are to prevent more atrocities by Putin then we must have a long term, credible and above all properly funded security guarantee for Ukraine—a guarantee issued by the UK, the U.S. and all Western allies.”
In an editorial, the Financial Times compared Donald Trump to late British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, quoting Churchill after the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
Brian Taylor points out that Trump’s State Department, in 2018, issued the “Crimea Declaration,” which reaffirmed a long-standing U.S. position, going back to 1932, to not recognize “claims of sovereignty over territory seized by force in contravention of international law,” and Russia’s attempted annexation of Crimea. It pledged to “maintain this policy until Ukraine’s territorial integrity is restored.”
“It is thus quite disturbing, and a reversal of over 90 years of U.S. foreign policy, that Trump is talking about legally recognizing Russian control over Crimea as part of a ‘peace deal,” said Taylor. “This would send a terrible signal to other potential aggressors around the world.”
After Russia fired 70 missiles and 145 drones on civilians in Kyiv, killing 12 and wounding 90, Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s first-term vice president, wrote on X.com, “Following last night’s brutal assault on Kyiv, it’s clear Putin has no interest in peace. Time to answer Russia’s ongoing invasion in Ukraine with renewed American strength and give our ally the military support they need to win a victory for freedom.”
Conservative Iowa Senator Charles Grassley said in a statement, “I’VE SEEN ENOUGH KILLING OF INNOCENT UKRAINIAN women + children. President Trump pls put the toughest of sanctions on Putin. U ought to c from clear evidence that he is playing America as a patsy.”
Trump may be sensitive to the criticism that he is too apt to believe Vladimir Putin and is favorably inclined toward Russia. After a meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky on April 26, 2025, Trump attacked a New York Times article by Peter Baker. The article began with the line: “If President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia drafted a shopping list of what he wanted from Washington, it would be hard to beat what he was offered in the first 100 days of President Trump’s new term.”
