Trump says he now believes Ukraine can win back all territory lost to
Russia with NATO's help
[September 24, 2025]
By MATTHEW LEE, AAMER MADHANI and ILLIA NOVIKOV
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he
believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic
shift from the U.S. leader’s repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions
to end the war.
Trump posted on social media soon after meeting with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the United Nations General
Assembly gathering of world leaders.
“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. "With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe
and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War
started, is very much an option.”
The strengthened support from Trump, if it sticks, is a huge win for
Zelenskyy, who has urged the American president to keep up the pressure
on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his war. It was a departure
from Trump's previous suggestions that Ukraine would never be able to
reclaim all the territory that Russia has occupied since seizing the
Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
That had disheartened Zelenskyy, Europeans and Ukrainians and called
into question the U.S. commitment to U.N. principles of sovereignty and
territorial integrity. But now, Trump’s view of the battlefield
coincides more with Ukraine’s, Zelenskyy said.
“Trump is a game changer by himself,” Zelenskyy told reporters after
their meeting.
Trump needles Russia about war in Ukraine
Trump, going back to his 2024 campaign, insisted he would quickly end
the war, but his peace efforts appear to have stalled following a
diplomatic blitz last month, when he held a summit with Putin and a
White House meeting with Zelenskyy and European allies.
Trump has acknowledged, including in his U.N. speech to world leaders,
that he thought a resolution to this conflict would be “the easiest”
because he has had a good relationship with Putin. Trump said he is open
to imposing more sanctions on Russia and urged Europe to join in.
“Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War
that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win,”
Trump wrote on social media. “This is not distinguishing Russia. In
fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’”
In his speech to the General Assembly, Trump said the war in Ukraine was
making Russia “look bad” because it was “supposed to be a quick little
skirmish.”
“It shows you what leadership is, what bad leadership can do to a
country,” he said. “The only question now is how many lives will be
needlessly lost on both sides.”
Before meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said the “biggest progress” toward
ending the conflict “is that the Russian economy is terrible right now.”
Zelenskyy said he agreed with Trump’s call for European nations to
further halt imports of Russian oil and natural gas.
“We have great respect for the fight that Ukraine is putting up,” Trump
told Zelenskyy, who replied that he had “good news” from the
battlefield.
How Trump's stance has shifted on Ukraine
Before his Alaska summit with Putin last month, Trump repeated that any
resolution to the war would require “some land swapping."
In talks with Zelenskyy and Europeans just afterward, Trump said Putin
reiterated that he wants the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up
the Donbas, according to European officials. Days later, Zelenskyy and
prominent European leaders came to the White House.
Following those meetings, Trump announced he was arranging for direct
talks between Putin and Zelenskyy. But Putin hasn’t shown any interest
in meeting with Zelenskyy and Moscow has only intensified its
bombardment of Ukraine.
European leaders as well as American lawmakers, including some
Republican allies of Trump, have urged the president to dial up stronger
sanctions on Russia.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks while meeting with
President Donald Trump meets during the United Nations General
Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“In the event that Russia is not ready to make a deal to end the
war, then the United States is fully prepared to impose a very
strong round of powerful tariffs, which would stop the bloodshed, I
believe, very quickly,” Trump told the General Assembly.
However, he repeated his calls for Europe to “step it up” and stop
buying Russian oil, the engine feeding Putin’s war machine.
Push for sanctions and cutting off Russian oil
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said before
meeting with Trump that Europe would be imposing more sanctions and
tariffs on Russia and that the bloc would be further reducing its
imports of Russian energy.
Zelenskyy, speaking at a special U.N. Security Council session on
Ukraine, also appealed for stronger U.S. pressure on Russia.
“Moscow fears America and always pays attention to it,” said
Zelenskyy, who has had strained ties with Trump in previous sitdowns
and has previously faced White House accusations that he was partly
to blame for Russia’s invasion in 2022.
Russia denigrated the Security Council meeting as just the New York
stop in the world tour of a “former actor,” a reference to Zelenskyy.
“There is no added value for the establishment of peace in Ukraine
generated from today’s meeting,” said Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s
deputy ambassador to the U.N. "This will merely become yet another
shameful episode in the market of hypocrisy.”
European leaders have supported Zelenskyy’s diplomatic efforts, with
some alarmed by the possibility that the war could spread beyond
Ukraine as they are facing what they have called Russian
provocations.
“I welcome the fact that the president of the United States believes
in Ukraine’s ability not only to hold the course” but to prevail,
French President Emmanuel Macron said.
NATO allies will hold formal consultations at Estonia’s request on
Tuesday, after the Baltic country said three Russian fighter jets
entered its airspace last week without authorization.
Trump said he would back NATO countries that choose to shoot down
intruding Russian planes, but said direct U.S. involvement would
depend on the circumstances.
New strikes in Ukraine as toll of war grows
The full-scale war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, is taking a heavy
toll on Ukrainian civilians. Russia said it shot down three dozen
Ukrainian drones heading toward Moscow, while Ukraine said Russian
missiles, drones and bombs killed at least two civilians.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also said
this month that Ukrainian civilian casualties increased by 40% in
the first eight months of this year compared with 2024, as Russia
escalated its long-range missile and localized drone strikes.
A U.N. Human Rights Office report released Tuesday described the
dire situation of thousands of civilians detained by Russia in areas
of Ukraine it has captured.
“Russian authorities have subjected Ukrainian civilian detainees in
occupied territory to torture and ill-treatment, including sexual
violence, in a widespread and systematic manner,” the report said.
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Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. AP reporters Hanna Arhirova in
Kyiv, Ukraine, and Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed
to this report.
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