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President Donald Trump, who has praised Vladimir Putin in the past, has recently started publicly criticizing him. By G. A. McNeeley
July 22, 2025 (Washington D.C.) -- President Donald Trump has recently criticized Vladimir Putin, according to CNN. He has also announced that he will increase weapons supplies for European allies, so that those countries can send them to Ukraine, according to Axios.
On Tuesday, July 15, Russia rejected Trump's "ultimatum" for Moscow to sign a ceasefire deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days as "unacceptable," calling for continued negotiations and insisting that the invasion ordered by Putin will continue until their goals are achieved, according to CBS News.
Meanwhile, Putin intends to keep fighting in Ukraine until the West meets his terms for peace, unfazed by Trump's threats of tougher sanctions, and his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance, three anonymous sources told Reuters.
On Wednesday, July 16, General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, warned that their forces could capture Russia's heavily fortified Kaliningrad region "in a timeframe that is unheard of" if necessary. He said this as the alliance unveiled a new Eastern Flank defense plan at the Association of the U.S. Army's inaugural LandEuro conference, according to Newsweek.
Hypothetically, if Putin succeeds in conquering Ukraine, he may go after Poland or another European nation next. If he attacks any member of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) the U.S. is obligated to come to their defense, which could potentially lead to another world war.
According to Article 5 of The North Atlantic Treaty, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties…”
Trump Is Trying To Rewrite His History With Putin
On Monday, July 14, Trump suggested that he never really trusted Putin. “He’s fooled a lot of people,” he said, according to CNN.
Trump also said that on three or four occasions, he felt they had a deal in place, only for Putin to pull the rug out from beneath them and continue to hit Ukraine hard.
However, Trump has also repeatedly vouched for Putin over the years, and even in recent months.
Trump once said Putin was “smart” with regard to Russia’s invasion at a March 2022 rally in Georgia. “But they asked me, ‘Is Putin Smart?’ Yes, Putin was smart. And I actually thought he was going to be negotiating. I said, ‘That’s a hell of a way to negotiate, put 200,000 soldiers on the border,’” according to the U.S. News & World Report.
Trump was once asked about the prospect of Putin violating the terms of any deal that might be reached (which Putin has done before), but he dismissed the idea. “I think he’ll keep his word,” he said, according to CNN.
The Trump Administration’s trust in its negotiations with Putin set off February’s Oval Office blow-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
After Vice President JD Vance signaled that the administration preferred “diplomacy” to chest-thumping, Zelensky asked Vance whether or not Putin could be trusted to engage faithfully in talks. Vance said that it was “disrespectful” for Zelensky to litigate this issue in front of the media.
“We signed ceasefire” in 2019, Zelensky said, according to CNN. “Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go [into Ukraine]. We signed him with gas contract – gas contract, yes, but after that, he broken the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners, but he didn’t do it.”
Ultimately, Trump was asked in that meeting about what would happen if Putin violates the terms of a ceasefire, and he blanched at the suggestion.
“‘What if’ anything?” Trump said, according to CNN. “What if a bomb drops on your head right now, OK? What if they break it? I don’t know. They broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn’t respect him. They didn’t respect Obama. They respect me.”
However, not everyone agrees with Trump’s recent actions, and some are skeptical of him.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) said that Trump's change of tone on Russia and its ongoing war against Ukraine is a "remarkable shift" that must “has to be followed by action,” according to NPR.
“The scale of what the Ukrainians need in military terms, the Patriot missile systems, the air to air and air to ground systems that are so important to the defense of Ukraine,” Blumenthal told Steve Inskeep, in an interview with NPR.
“But the shift in attitude has to be accompanied by real action,” Blumenthal added.
Representative Adam Smith (D-Washington) said on Sunday, July 20, that Trump “made an enormous mistake” in blaming the Russia-Ukraine war on the Ukrainians, according to The Hill.
“I think the Trump administration made an enormous mistake during the campaign and then from the election forward by putting the blame on Ukraine for the war,” Smith told anchor Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday. “It seems that President Trump honestly thought that it was Ukraine that was forcing forward the conflict.”
In February, Trump blamed Ukraine’s leaders for the war with Russia, stating Zelensky “should have never started it,” according to The Hill.
Russia Rejects Trump’s Demand For A Ceasefire
In response to Trump's threat to impose 100% secondary tariffs on countries that do business with Russia if Putin's government doesn’t agree to a deal to end the war within that 50-day timeframe, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Tuesday, July 15, that "any attempts to make demands, especially ultimatums, are unacceptable to us," according to CBS News.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that "some of it is addressed personally to (Russian) President Putin. We definitely need time to analyze what was said in Washington," during his daily briefing on Tuesday, July 15, according to CBS News. "If and when President Putin deems it necessary, he will definitely comment on it. I would not want to get ahead of ourselves, so let's wait for Putin's decision on whether he will comment on it himself."
Russia's former President Dmitry Medvedev, who is close to the Kremlin, called Trump's remarks "a theatrical ultimatum" in a social media post, adding that "Russia didn't care,” according to CBS News.
On Monday, July 14, in the Oval Office, alongside visiting NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump announced a deal for the United States to sell additional weapons to its NATO allies, with the understanding that they’ll then send those weapons to Ukraine.
"We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it, and they're going to be paying for it," Trump said, according to CBS News.
"This is really big," Rutte said, according to CBS News. "And the decision is that you want Ukraine [to have] what it needs to have to maintain, to be able to defend itself against Russia, but you want Europeans to pay for it, which is totally logical."
Also on Monday, July 14, Zelensky said in a social media post that he had spoken with Trump and thanked him, "for the willingness to support Ukraine and to continue working together to stop the killings and establish a lasting and just peace."
"It's important that we have such a good relationship, and that the Alliance countries are working to increase defense spending," Zelenskyy said, according to CBS News. "We agreed to catch up more often by phone and coordinate our steps in the future as well. Thank you, Mr. President! Thank you, America!"
On Tuesday, July 15, Trump said that "at the end of 50 days, if we don't have a deal, too bad." At that point, "the tariffs are going to go, and other sanctions," but he added that Zelensky "shouldn't target" Moscow, according to CBS News.
Three Anonymous Sources Told Reuters About Putin’s Plans
According to Reuters, three anonymous sources (who are “familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking”) told them that Putin won’t stop the war under pressure from the West and that he believes Russia can endure more economic hardship, including threatened U.S. tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil.
"Putin thinks no one has seriously engaged with him on the details of peace in Ukraine - including the Americans - so he will continue until he gets what he wants," one of the sources told Reuters.
Putin's conditions for peace include a legally binding pledge that NATO won't expand eastwards, Ukrainian neutrality and limits on its armed forces, protection for Russian speakers who live there, acceptance of Russia's territorial gains, and a security guarantee for Ukraine involving major powers (though it’s unclear how this would work), the sources told Reuters.
Two of the sources told Reuters that Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield and its economy is exceeding the production of the United States-led NATO alliance in key munitions, such as artillery shells.
Russia, which already controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has advanced approximately 1,415 square kilometers (546 square miles) in the past three months, according to data from the DeepStateMap, an open-source intelligence map of the conflict.
Russia currently controls Crimea, Luhansk, more than 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Putin's public position is that those first five regions (Crimea and the four regions of eastern Ukraine) are now part of Russia, and Kyiv must withdraw before there can be peace.
Zelensky has said that Ukraine won’t recognize Russia's sovereignty over its conquered regions, and that Kyiv retains the sovereign right to decide whether it wants to join NATO.
Putin could fight on until Ukraine's defenses collapse and widen his territorial ambitions to include more of Ukraine, the sources told Reuters.
"Russia will act based on Ukraine's weakness," the third source told Reuters, adding that Moscow might halt its offensive after conquering the four eastern regions of Ukraine if it encounters stiff resistance. "But if it falls, there will be an even greater conquest of Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy and Kharkiv."
Zelensky has said Russia's offensive isn’t going as successfully as Moscow had hoped. His top brass, who acknowledged that Russian forces outnumber Ukraine's, said that Kyiv's troops are holding the line and forcing Russia to pay a heavy price for its gains.
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Putin is smart like a fox