THE SWITCH
TRUMP'S COMING PIVOT TO UKRAINE
NEWS ANALYSIS
Laura Loomer’s sudden come-to-Damascus moment on Ukraine this week surprised many. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s declaration that the Anchorage proposals have failed, Loomer’s change of heart, and the now-confirmed White House visit for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy all point to a change in the way the Trump administration views the Ukraine war.
As we speculated last month, Ukraine’s new drone campaign may be the reason why. At the recent NATO Summit, Trump praised Ukraine and its drone campaign which is isolating Crimea and creating gasoline shortages for Russian civilians and military forces.
The change is also playing out inside the MAGA movement. Loomer stands on the pro-Israel side of the MAGA movement, while Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have expressed skepticism about Israel. Carlson and Owens are also the leading pro-Russian voices in the MAGA coaltion and Loomer’s change of heart threatens to deepen their isolation. Loomer has also clashed with Vice-President J.D. Vance, long the most pro-Russian voice in the Trump administration.
But Vance’s new praise for Ukraine also points to a Trump pivot on Ukraine. In a recent interview in the Sunday Times Vance said that recent Ukrainian battlefield successes “may create the space that we need to bring this thing to a close.”
Since the Rubio-Lavrov meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Manila, the Russian press has been expressing deep skepticism of the Trump-Putin relationship. Kommersant quoted Fyodor Lukyanov, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy as saying “the situation has changed almost a year after the meeting in Alaska.” Lukyanov also told the paper that the Anchorage formula is “no longer relevant for both military and political reasons.”
Hawkish Russian political analyst Kirill Strelnikov echoed this pessimistic view in RIA Novosti, arguing that Ukraine “secretly became the boss” of the United States. Strelinkov added that “the Russian leadership has long since realized which way the wind is blowing.”
But perhaps the leading indicator of a change in U.S. policy towards Ukraine is Trump himself. Yesterday he went beyond his praise of Ukraine last month when he posted a screenshot of Loomer’s laudatory interview of Zelenskyy to his Truth Social account.
