Trump says he now believes Ukraine can win back all territory lost to Russia with NATO’s help

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic shift from the U.S. leader’s repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions to end the war.

Trump posted on social media soon after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

“I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump wrote. “With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option.”

The strengthened support from Trump, if it sticks, is a huge win for Zelenskyy, who has urged the American president to keep up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his brutal war. It was a departure from Trump’s previous suggestions that Ukraine would never be able to reclaim all the territory that Russia has occupied since seizing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

That had disheartened Zelenskyy, Europeans and Ukrainians and called into question the U.S. commitment to U.N. principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. But now, Trump’s view of the battlefield coincides more with Ukraine’s, Zelenskyy said.

“Trump is a game changer by himself,” Zelenskyy told reporters after their meeting.

Trump needles Russia about war in Ukraine

Trump, going back to his 2024 campaign, insisted he would quickly end the war, but his peace efforts appear to have stalled following a diplomatic blitz last month, when he held a summit with Putin and a White House meeting with Zelenskyy and European allies.

Trump has acknowledged, including in his U.N. speech to world leaders, that he thought a resolution to this conflict would be “the easiest” because he has had a good relationship with Putin. Trump said he is open to imposing more sanctions on Russia and urged Europe to join in.

“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,” Trump wrote on social media. “This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”

In his speech to the General Assembly, Trump said the war in Ukraine was making Russia “look bad” because it was “supposed to be a quick little skirmish.”

“It shows you what leadership is, what bad leadership can do to a country,” he said. “The only question now is how many lives will be needlessly lost on both sides.”

Before meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said the “biggest progress” toward ending the conflict “is that the Russian economy is terrible right now.” Zelenskyy said he agreed with Trump’s call for European nations to further halt imports of Russian oil and natural gas.

“We have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up,” Trump told Zelenskyy, who replied that he had “good news” from the battlefield.

How Trump’s stance has shifted on Ukraine

Before his Alaska summit with Putin last month, Trump repeated that any resolution to the war would require “some land swapping.”

In talks with Zelenskyy and Europeans just afterward, Trump said Putin reiterated that he wants the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas, according to European officials. Days later, Zelenskyy and prominent European leaders came to the White House.

Following those meetings, Trump announced he was arranging for direct talks between Putin and Zelenskyy. But Putin hasn’t shown any interest in meeting with Zelenskyy and Moscow has only intensified its bombardment of Ukraine.

European leaders as well as American lawmakers, including some Republican allies of Trump, have urged the president to dial up stronger sanctions on Russia.

“In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very strong round of powerful tariffs, which would stop the bloodshed, I believe, very quickly,” Trump told the General Assembly.

However, he repeated his calls for Europe to “step it up” and stop buying Russian oil, the engine feeding Putin’s war machine.

Push for sanctions and cutting off Russian oil

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said before a meeting with Trump that Europe would be imposing more sanctions and tariffs on Russia and that the bloc would be further reducing its imports of Russian energy.

Zelenskyy, speaking at a special U.N. Security Council session on Ukraine, also appealed for stronger U.S. pressure on Russia.

“Moscow fears America and always pays attention to it,” said Zelenskyy, who has had strained ties with Trump in previous sitdowns and has previously faced White House accusations that he was partly to blame for Russia’s invasion in 2022.

European leaders have supported Zelenskyy’s diplomatic efforts, with some alarmed by the possibility that the war could spread beyond Ukraine as they are facing what they have called Russian provocations.

NATO allies will hold formal consultations at Estonia’s request on Tuesday, after the Baltic country said that three Russian fighter jets entered its airspace last week without authorization.

Trump said he would back NATO countries that choose to shoot down intruding Russian planes, but said direct U.S. involvement would depend on the circumstances.

New strikes in Ukraine as toll of war grows

The full-scale war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, is taking a heavy toll on Ukrainian civilians. Russia said it shot down three dozen Ukrainian drones heading toward Moscow, while Ukraine said Russian missiles, drones and bombs killed at least two civilians.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also said this month that Ukrainian civilian casualties increased by 40% in the first eight months of this year compared with 2024, as Russia escalated its long-range missile and localized drone strikes.

A U.N. Human Rights Office report released Tuesday described the dire situation of thousands of civilians detained by Russia in areas of Ukraine it has captured.

“Russian authorities have subjected Ukrainian civilian detainees in occupied territory to torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, in a widespread and systematic manner,” the report said.

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Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. AP reporter Hanna Arhirova contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine