That's what it's about

• Donald Trump reportedly sharply threatened Volodymyr Zelensky at last week's meeting.
• By stating, among other things, that the Russian invasion was merely a special operation, Trump directly borrowed from the Kremlin's arguments.
• A chronological analysis shows: After the Putin phone call, Trump is back in many respects where he was at the beginning of the year.

There is an ice age between Ukraine and the USA for the second time this year: After the meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, it was initially only clear that Ukraine would not receive any Tomahawk missiles for the time being – just how harshly the US President criticized his Ukrainian counterpart during the meeting was revealed by a report in the Financial Times on Sunday evening.

As the newspaper reports, citing insiders familiar with the conversation, the US president took the Kremlin's stance on various points of discussion. This is not the first time Trump has used Russian allegations to express his dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian president. Since the public scandal in the Oval Office at the end of February, Trump's stance seemed to have softened in various aspects – that phase now appears to be definitively over.

Immediately before the meeting with Zelensky, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin."My relationship with him meant nothing," Trump said at the end of September, referring to his originally expressed hope of ending the war within 24 hours. Now, Putin, the experienced intelligence officer and statesman, may have repaired this relationship with the US president: Here's an overview of the points on which Trump has changed his mind and to what extent.

This is a special operation and not a war

Trump reportedly told Zelensky on Friday in Washington that Putin had pointed out to him during the phone call that the Russian invasion, which has been going on for over three and a half years, was a special military operation and not even a war. During the joint reception before the assembled press, Trump still spoke of war, as he had done in recent months. However, Trump had already irritated Ukraine and its allies in the past with statements that Ukraine had provoked the Russian invasion.

You are losing the war – if Putin wants, he will destroy you

Trump made it clear to Zelensky that, in his view, Ukraine was losing the war and threatened Zelensky that Putin could destroy him if he truly wanted to. Thus, the US president's assessment of a possible Russian victory appears to have returned to where it was at the beginning of 2025: In the spring, Trump repeatedly expressed pessimism about the prospects of a Ukrainian victory.

In July, he stated that Putin only wants to kill. Then, in September, a clear turnaround seemed to have occurred: If Russia truly had a strong army, they would have defeated Ukraine in less than a week, Trump wrote on Truth Social after a meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of the UN summit, calling the Russian army, among other things, a paper tiger.

Now Trump seems to have rekindled his conviction about the myth of the invincible Russian army. According to André Härtel, the Ukrainian army remains under massive pressure, but the Eastern European expert recently told 20 Minuten that a horror scenario in which Putin's troops succeed in breaking through the entire front line is far from a reality.

I don't even know where the front line is

During the heated conversation with Zelensky, Trump reportedly also swept away various maps of the front line and told the Ukrainian president that he had no idea where the red line was, as he had never been there. In the past, Trump had repeatedly told the media that he was well informed about the front line and the latest developments.

The Russian economy is doing great

In the spring of 2025, Trump stated that the Russian economy was under massive pressure due to the sanctions that had been in place for several years. He reiterated this view in his"paper tiger" statement: The Russian economy was in a terrible, catastrophic state, the US president said at the end of September. Now, in a conversation with Zelensky, he gave it top marks.

The fact that the US President has changed his views on individual points so drastically in such a short period of time shows that the relationship between Putin and Trump may have meant nothing when it comes to Trump's peace efforts – but for the Russian President, his connection to his US counterpart is likely to be extremely valuable at the moment.