Trump: Ukraine’s Survival Is ‘Important to Us’

Former president Donald Trump’s latest Truth Social post on Ukraine reprised some of the lines he’s been using throughout the 2024 campaign. These are points with which most people are already familiar: Europe isn’t doing enough to support Ukraine compared with America’s level of support, and Russia never would have invaded if he had been in the White House.

But a few things stand out. Trump neither attacked House Speaker Mike Johnson’s national-security legislative package nor called for an end to U.S. assistance for Ukraine.

Most notably, he called Ukraine’s survival “important.” This appears to be a new position.

Here’s the relevant portion of the post: “As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us! GET MOVING EUROPE!”

Obviously, none of the above is an endorsement of the bills making their way through Congress this week. But considering that he could’ve done significant damage to Johnson’s legislative initiative, the lack of criticism of the Ukraine provisions is conspicuous.

The context is important. He met yesterday in New York with Polish president Andrzej Duda. They discussed the war in Ukraine and the possibility of raising NATO’s minimum defense-spending threshold to 3 percent of GDP, the Trump campaign said. “We’re behind Poland all the way,” Trump said. On Friday, he hosted Johnson at Mar-a-Lago, wrapping up their meeting with a press conference at which he expressed support for the speaker.

Trump could certainly come out against the House’s Ukraine-funding provisions in the future. But for now, it seems that his preferred approach is to urge America’s European allies to do much more to support Kyiv, hit the Biden administration for failing to deter Russia, and express support for Ukrainian “survival and strength.”