Trump Rewrites History as Ukraine War Marks 3rd Anniversary
“You should have never started it,” he tells Ukraine.
Three years ago today, the world stood on edge as Russian troops swept into Ukraine and launched the largest military invasion in Europe since World War II.
Behind the scenes, then-President Joe Biden was reportedly deeply pessimistic about the direction of the war. According to the New York Times, he privately told a group of television anchors that he believed Russia would be able to defeat Ukraine; the White House’s assumption was that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would either be killed or quickly ousted.
In public, though, Biden did not mince words. “The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation, without justification, without necessity,” then-President Joe Biden declared from the White House in the war’s first hours. “This is a premeditated attack.”
The years since have defied every prediction, including Biden’s. Russia has not defeated Ukraine, although it now controls about one-fifth of the country. Ukraine was able to repel Russia’s advances in key areas, holding them to a stalemate. Zelensky remains alive and in charge.
But the next (and potentially final) chapter of the war may be the least predictable yet, as a new president remakes one of the constants of the conflict — America’s role as a staunch ally, and weapons supplier, of Ukraine — into a sudden variable. While Biden was quick on February 24, 2022 to refer to the war as an unprovoked attack by Russia, President Donald Trump has spent the days leading up to the third anniversary falsely suggesting that Ukraine, not Russia, initiated the conflict.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited,’” Trump said last week, referring to Zelensky’s protests that Ukraine was not included during a recent U.S.-Russia summit in Saudi Arabia. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
The next day, Trump escalated his war of words with Ukraine, calling Zelensky a “dictator” without offering a similar designation to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has praised in the past, along with other strongman leaders. Zelensky reportedly upset Trump by rejecting the U.S.’ initial terms for a deal on Ukrainian mineral rights, which remains in the works.
Over the weekend, Trump’s advisers doubled down on the president’s refusal to blame Putin for the war he started. “The war didn’t need to happen. It was provoked,” White House special envoy Steve Witkoff said on CNN, before hastening to add: “It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO — the president has spoken about this. That didn’t need to happen. It basically became a threat to the Russians.”
Asked on Fox News if he would acknowledge that “Russia is the aggressor here,” White House national security adviser Michael Waltz dodged the question. A separate Fox interviewer asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if it was “fair to say” that “Russia attacked unprovoked into Ukraine three years ago tomorrow.” Hegseth responded: “Fair to say it’s a complicated situation.”
According to Politico, Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who were both fierce Russia hawks in Congress — are “under intense internal scrutiny inside a White House where deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Sergio Gor, who oversees personnel decisions, have shown little tolerance for anyone who diverges from the MAGA mindset.”
Trump officials are now trying to press their skewed interpretation of the war’s origins onto the world stage. The U.S. has been pressuring Ukraine to withdraw a proposed United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion, urging a replacement resolution that merely calls for the war to end. According to CNN, the U.S. resolution “does not condemn Russia as the aggressor in the conflict” or “make any acknowledgement of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”
Both resolutions are expected to receive a vote at the UN today.
The Group of Seven (G7) is also planning to release a joint statement on the war today; U.S. officials have reportedly pushed back on draft language referring to Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine.
European leaders and American lawmakers — of both parties — have reacted with shock to the Trump administration’s parroting of Russian rhetoric that Moscow is not at fault for the war. “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) wrote on X last week, adding: “I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) wrote a message this morning asking “all elected officials from all Parties and all levels of Government” to join him in declaring that “Vladimir Putin illegally invaded Ukraine without justification and without provocation” and that “the United States of America stands with Democracies and opposes Dictatorships.”
French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Trump at the White House today; British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will follow on Thursday, a one-two punch aimed at bringing the U.S. back in alignment with Europe.
Meanwhile, Russian officials appear thrilled at the change in tune coming from the White House. “Dozens of times I categorically rejected with all possible and very convincing arguments the claim of our Western opponents regarding ‘unprovoked’ Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov wrote in response to Witkoff’s comments. “Now the US confirmed that the invasion was in fact provoked.”
“If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the current deputy chair of the country’s Security Council, wrote on X after Trump referred to Zelensky as a “dictator” last week. “@realDonaldTrump is 200 percent right.”
FLASHBACK: “What Trump didn’t say at the debate,” 9/12/2024. One preview of the current rhetoric coming out of Trump’s White House was his refusal at his debate with Kamala Harris to say whether he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win the ongoing war. Here’s what I reported from the Spin Room that night:
There were also several Republican members of Congress, many of whom have long records of commentary on Ukraine and other foreign conflicts — records I often found them willing to contort in service of Trump’s stance, by now an all-too-familiar Republican ritual.
“Donald Trump doesn’t talk like a politician,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told me. “He talks like a businessman and a negotiator, and he views his role in this conflict [as] bringing it to an end and negotiating an end. If he clearly expresses himself on one side or another, in his mind, he’s basically taking himself out of the equation as a viable negotiator.”
But, Rubio told me, he didn’t harbor hesitation about which side Trump sympathizes with privately. “Ultimately, I have no doubt what his policies [would be in a second term], because he wasn’t arming the Russians, he was arming the Ukrainians when he was president.”
I’d be curious if Rubio is starting to have any doubts now.
More news to know
AP: Conservative opposition wins German election and the far right is 2nd with strongest postwar result
WaPo: Trump ousts Joint Chiefs chairman, other leaders in major Pentagon shake-up
CNN: Trump appointees appear to contradict Musk for first time in pushback to OPM email
NBC: Trump taps conservative podcaster Dan Bongino to be deputy FBI director
The Hill: GOP scrambles to win over moderates on budget resolution
CBS: Associated Press sues three top Trump officials over access restrictions
The day ahead
President Trump will participate in a G7 call this morning, followed by a meeting and joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in the afternoon.
The Senate will hold a procedural vote on Daniel Driscoll’s nomination to be Secretary of the Army.
The House will vote on up to seven pieces of legislation related to small businesses.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Gutierrez v. Saenz.
“Trump lies about history” is a far more accurate headline.
Have you called it a constitutional crisis yet? NPR is already discussing how we are in the start of competitive authoritarianism.