Trump casts new doubt on Ukraine's ability to defeat Russia

Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Kateryna Chursina and Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Bloomberg News on Oct 20, 2025

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russian forces, backing off an earlier upbeat assessment as he looks to bring the war to an end and prepares for another meeting with President Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks.

“I don’t think they will, but they could still win it,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Monday. “I never said they would win it. I said they could win. Anything can happen.”

The remarks marked another shift in tone for Trump, who has repeatedly changed his outlook on Ukraine’s chances and the degree to which he’s willing to support President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government. Last month, Ukraine’s supporters hailed it as a major shift when Trump took to social media to say the country “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

ZelenskYy was in Washington last Friday to try to persuade Trump to send Ukraine Tomahawk missiles and other support. But Putin got to Trump with a phone call the day before that meeting, and the two leaders agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks even though a previous meeting in Alaska ended with little progress on ending the war.

Since that call, Trump has backed away from the strong language of his September social media post, pressing both sides to make a deal, and calling for the fighting to “stop right now at the battle line.” He’s also equivocated over military aid to Ukraine and the threat of new sanctions on Russia.

Later Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters the Senate will hold off considering new sanctions legislation on Russia until after Trump’s planned meeting with Putin. Last week, before Trump spoke to Putin, Thune had said he would schedule a vote on the measure in the next 30 days.

ZelenskYy had hoped the White House talk would be a chance to ratchet up pressure on Putin as he pressed the U.S. to sell his country Tomahawk cruise missiles. Instead, he left Washington empty-handed after Trump declined to arm Ukraine with weapons powerful enough to reach Moscow and targets deep inside Russia.

Zelenskyy also said Budapest wasn’t the best place for talks to end the war in Ukraine because of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Russia-friendly stance, but that he’d still come if invited.

“The perception that Russia is supposedly winning on the battlefield exists in certain circles in the United States,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Monday. “It seems to me that among those who constantly promote the idea of Russia’s so-called unconditional advantages in this war is the current prime minister of Hungary.”

Still, Zelenskyy said he’d consider an invitation to Budapest. “If it’s an invitation in a format where the three of us meet, or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy, where President Trump meets with Putin and President Trump meets with me – then, in one format or another, we’ll agree to it,” he said.

The EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday also criticized the choice of venue for a summit. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said “the presence of Vladimir Putin on EU soil only makes sense if it allows for an immediate ceasefire without conditions.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said later that leaders of countries in a coalition that supports Ukraine would meet in London on Friday. The U.S.-Russia summit plan has unsettled European officials, who fear being sidelined as Trump pushes to negotiate directly with Putin against their advice and on their territory.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday and discussed implementing agreements Trump and Putin reached during their Thursday call, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement.

Rubio’s office said he “emphasized the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

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