On June 24, during a White House meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, US President Donald Trump again adjusted his public rhetoric on Ukraine and spoke positively about Volodymyr Zelensky.
“He’s doing pretty well, however you look at it. At least he’s not giving up. A lot of people are dying on both sides, but I think he is handling it well. You have to say he is a courageous man. He has excellent weapons, but he also has excellent people, real fighters,” Trump said when Sky News correspondent Mark Stone asked whether Zelensky was winning now.
A day earlier, Zelensky used his evening address to sum up interim results of Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign against Russia. He said fuel shortages after attacks on oil refineries were being recorded in more than 60 Russian regions, while air defenses were being pulled toward Moscow and Valdai, leaving the rest of the country less protected.
Zelensky also said the operation, including in Crimea, had been “carefully calculated,” and that if Ukraine received from its partners what had been discussed at the G7 summit, it could quickly create conditions that would force Russia to “choose peace.”
As Meduza notes, signs of a shift in Trump’s position became visible after the G7 summit in Evian on June 15-17. Emmanuel Macron said Trump had shown a “real change in approach” toward Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, the US president was impressed by Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russia, while the Kyiv Independent, citing a senior Ukrainian official, reported that Trump had privately urged Zelensky to act more “boldly.”
At the same time, Foreign Policy reported that the White House has avoided harsh public statements toward Moscow for fear of damaging negotiations. According to Reuters, this softer tone from Washington is causing “growing irritation” in Moscow. On June 23, Sergey Lavrov said Russia wanted to understand whether the US position on Ukraine had changed after the Evian meeting and what exactly Washington had taken away from that summit.