What will end Trump’s back-and-forth approach toward Russia and Ukraine

WASHINGTON—For most of the past two weeks, the Trump administration has advanced policies apparently intended to ratchet up pressure on Ukraine and provide advantages to the Kremlin. But in the past several days, new actions suggest that the administration could be changing tack. If so, that would be consistent with the administration’s inconsistent approach toward ending the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. External pressure will be required to keep the administration on the right track. First, the problematic turn in the administration’s policy. Since US President Donald Trump announced his diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 9, his administration has taken several steps that have made it more difficult for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s ongoing aggression and easier for Russia to continue its war. While the diesel deal itself was a breach of Western sanctions, including US sanctions, on Russian energy, Trump sought to justify it as a necessary step to ease diesel prices in the United States ahead of the midterm elections. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly criticized the move, Trump launched an intemperate personal attack on his Ukrainian counterpart that continued for well over a week. Of greater note, Trump also insisted that Ukraine end its highly effective drone strikes on Russian oil refineries, justifying it as necessary to bring down global diesel prices—a dubious assertion because Russia has barely enough diesel for its own needs. Zelenskyy was reluctant to stop the strikes because the Kremlin was continuing to batter Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including energy facilities. When Trump announced on October 11 an “energy ceasefire” between Ukraine and Russia, which neither side had agreed to, Zelenskyy said that he would abide by it if Moscow did. Putin, however, responded with three consecutive days of strikes on Ukrainian energy targets. This onslaught finally prompted Zelenskyy, who initially deferred to Trump’s request, to resume Ukrainian attacks on Russian hydrocarbon installations. Trump’s reaction to all of this? Sharp words for Zelenskyy and silence for Putin. Ominously, this was accompanied by the appearance of difficulties in the provision of US military intelligence to Ukraine, especially related to Elon Musk’s satellite systems Starlink and Starshield, its military counterpart. These difficulties have made it harder for Ukraine to protect itself from Russia’s daily barrage of ballistic missiles and drones. The Kremlin likely celebrated this news, as it also must have after two other US moves during this period. On October 17, Trump waived the sanctions in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which passed Congress and Trump signed into law in September. Three days later, he said that he might be open to Putin’s proposed trilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping—but without Zelenskyy. Trump’s turn against Ukraine and toward Russia provoked serious criticism in the United States, where more than 80 percent of American voters have a negative view of the Kremlin strongman. This included criticism from conservative media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post editorial pages, and from over a dozen Republican members of Congress. This reaction put the administration on the defensive, with the White House denying that it had ordered a drop in Starlink or Starshield services to Ukraine and Musk responding that such decisions, at least regarding Starshield, could only be taken with US government approval. Trump has given two justifications for the sanctions waiver: first, that he needed to offer Putin concessions to stay involved in the negotiating process; second, that without sanctions relief, he would not have secured the recent release of Stephen Hubbard, an American prisoner in Russia. Neither rationale has quieted the critics. And members of Congress from both parties have begun talking about investigations into Trump’s current policies and even obstructing his agenda in the lame duck session after the midterms if those policies remain in place. While Trump has yet to reverse any of these Kremlin-friendly decisions, he did send US envoy Steve Witkoff to Oslo on October 20 to meet with Zelenskyy, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. The latter two leaders strongly support Ukraine. According to reports, the meeting went well, and Witkoff traveled to Moscow the next day with new ideas, agreed with Zelenskyy, to present to Putin. That stop yielded a Kremlin readiness to resume trilateral negotiations in November, but not, as Zelenskyy has long suggested, at the summit level. This was still enough for Team Trump to declare the diplomacy a success, even if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia was willing to talk, but not to offer concessions. Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff during a meeting at the Constantine Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, October 21, 2026. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters Connect) Meanwhile, Trump has for the moment stopped shooting rhetorical darts at Zelenskyy, despite Ukraine’s ongoing strikes at Russian oil and gas targets. The administration’s satisfaction with the movement toward renewed trilaterals may help explain this, as might the ongoing criticism of its clear turn toward Russia in recent weeks. The question now is what comes next. Statements or Truth Social posts by Trump may be the first indicator of where the administration goes from here. But perhaps the more important indicator is what happens with Starlink and Starshield. If restrictions on the systems’ use continue to hobble Ukraine’s defense, then it indicates that the White House’s policy of pressure on the victim continues. But this approach guarantees failure for Trump to achieve his stated goal of a stable peace that provides for a sovereign and secure Ukraine. It would also mean that Trump’s foreign policy critics, who have long claimed that he was in the tank for Putin, were right. But the pattern of Trump’s diplomacy since his return to the White House has been an irregular one. He has jumped back and forth between pressing the Kremlin for refusing more than half a dozen US proposals for peace or a ceasefire and accommodating Putin by pushing hard on Zelenskyy to make concessions that would facilitate Putin’s efforts to conquer Ukraine. Predicting where Trump ultimately comes down is a crapshoot, but the odds that he comes down on the side of blunting Putin’s aggression go up markedly if Congress acts on its inclination and insists on a policy that advances the United States’ national interests against its Kremlin adversary. This can start in the lame duck session, when the House can insist on the reversal of these unwarranted gifts to Putin before considering other legislation sought by the White House. And in the new term, the House should proceed with an investigation of the Trump administration’s policy on the war. If the Democrats win, this will likely happen, but it is important, too, that they not turn this into a witch hunt and Republicans treat this as a legitimate investigation into a national security problem and not obstruct it.