Trump claims for first time Ukraine can fully win back all territory seized by Russia: ‘Original form’

President Trump said for the first time Tuesday that he believes Ukraine can fully repulse Russia’s three-and-a-half year old invasion, saying after meetings on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that Kyiv has the ability to “win all of Ukraine back in its original form.”

“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after sitting down with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump, who has tried to negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine almost from the moment he took office as the 47th president, added that once Russians “find out what is really going on with this war” and how Moscow’s economy is geared toward war in Ukraine to the detriment of its citizens, “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!”

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“[Vladimir] Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act,” Trump wrote, affirming ahead of a one-on-one meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron: “Let them [Ukraine] get their land back.”

At a solo news conference, Zelensky said Trump had shared American intelligence on the extent of Russia’s economic struggles.

“We shared some details, and he shared with us, I think, even more, some details about the quality of Russia’s [economy.] It goes, we think, very bad,” said Zelensky, who acknowledged that the Russians still “have a lot of cash” from overseas oil sales. 

“The good news is that [the Russian] economy is in bad shape. Bad news that they still have a lot of money … but it’s decreasing,” he said. “And of course, in this case, we agree with President [Trump] — stop buying any energy resources from Russia in all the countries.”

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Ukraine has repeatedly launched aerial attacks inside Russia, targeting Moscow’s refineries and oil production capabilities in a bid to cripple parts of the Russian economy that are fueling the ongoing war. 

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The Ukrainian president also said he believed Trump has a greater understanding of the battlefield situation than earlier in his administration — and has the full measure of Putin as well.

“President Trump agreed with me when I said [Putin] will not wait for the ending of war in Ukraine [to start another conflict,]” Zelensky said. “He will try to find weak places in Europe, in NATO countries, he will try to do it.”

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Putin has been testing the tolerance of the NATO alliance with a series of incursions into the airspace of Poland, Romania, Estonia and Denmark in recent days. Trump also told reporters Tuesday he believed that NATO nations should shoot down Russian aircraft if they again try to violate sovereign airspace.

Trump’s Tuesday announcement was a far cry from his Oval Office shouting match with Zelensky from Feb. 28, during which he told the Ukrainian president “you don’t have the cards” to end the war to Kyiv’s advantage.

“The positions of our teams are closer than any time before,” Zelensky told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier Tuesday evening. “Details of the situation on the battlefield from intelligence of both countries are similar.”

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“I think we have better relation than before, and I think we didn’t have close relation [before] because we didn’t have maybe time, I don’t know,” the Ukrainian leader added.

During his news conference, Zelensky suggested that Putin had deceived Trump about Russia’s battlefield capabilities. 

“He has had relations with Putin, and before my dialogue with him, he had these relations,” he told reporters. “That’s why he trusted that when Putin shared with him the situation in Ukraine … these fairy tales that they will occupy totally our Donbas [region].”

“One by one, he understood that Putin was just sharing some information that is far away of real situation on the battlefield — far away from truth.”

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According to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, Russia has not made any major advance inside Ukraine since the early months of the invasion in 2022. 

Last week, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, revealed that he had recently advised the president that Russia was “losing this war.”

“If Putin thinks Russia is winning, his definition of winning and my definition of winning are absolutely two different things,” Kellogg told the Yalta European Security Conference in Kyiv. “If he was winning, he’d be in Kyiv. If he’s winning, he’d be west of the Dnipro River. If he was winning, he’d be on Odessa. If he was winning, he would have changed the government.”

Still, Trump stopped short of completely turning his back on Putin Tuesday, saying in response to a question about whether he still trusted the Kremlin tyrant: “I’ll let you know in about a month from now.”

Trump also made no mention of additional US military support for Ukraine, but said Washington will continue to sell weapons to NATO, “for NATO to do what they want with them.”

For Ukraine to meet Trump’s goal, Kiev’s forces would have to take back territories that have been fully or partially occupied by Russia since 2014, including Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions — known as the Donbas.

Zelensky has made restoration of all Ukrainian territory a goal of Kyiv’s war effort, but Republicans — including Trump — have said in the past that Ukraine will likely have to make “land swaps” to come to a peace deal.

“I think [Trump] understands, for today, that we can’t just swap territories,” Zelensky told Fox News Tuesday evening. “It’s not fair, it’s not real.”

When asked by Baier if he thought Trump’s position had changed, the Ukrainian president said: “Yes, I think so, and God bless it.”