Over the course of his first year back in office, President Donald Trump has gone back and forth, multiple times, on the Russia-Ukraine war. Throughout the campaign last year, Trump was promising to end the war, possibly as soon as his first day in office. That didn’t happen, but in February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on camera, in the Oval Office, and told him that the war could not be won.
In recent months, Trump has been focused on trying to end wars while pitching himself for the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s also expressed public disagreement with Vladimir Putin over the Russian president’s lack of interest in ending the war. He even approved the sale of additional weapons to Ukraine, albeit indirectly, and suggested Ukraine could regain lost territory.
A European diplomat briefed on the meeting between Trump and Zelensky described it as a mess and said Trump also “went on and on” about “his grievances of not having gotten the Nobel Peace Prize.”
-Washington Post pic.twitter.com/LKxq0URGVV— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 21, 2025
Then, this week, Trump appeared to flip-flop once again, in a meeting with Zelenskyy, in which he demanded territorial concessions and, yes, reportedly complained again about his lack of a Nobel Peace Prize.
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Per CNN, the meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy “turned acrimonious when the US leader insisted Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war, according to European officials briefed on the meeting.” Trump also, the report said, “grew frustrated and raised his voice multiple times.”
“I never said they would win it. I said they could win,” Trump said during a later press availability, per CNN. “Anything could happen. You know, war is a very strange thing. A lot of bad things happen. A lot of good things happen.”
According to a separate report in the Washington Post, Trump “urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal.” The Post also quoted a European diplomat as stating that Trump, in the meeting, “went on and on” about “his grievances of not having gotten the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Zelenskyy had said, a few weeks earlier of Trump that if he approved Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine, he would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize himself.
“The plan for ending the war won’t be easy, but it is certainly the way forward. And if Trump gives the world — above all, the Ukrainian people — the chance for such a ceasefire, then yes, he should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Zelenskyy said earlier this month, per Politico. “We will nominate him on behalf of Ukraine.”
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