Is Trump abandoning Ukraine?

We've asked many questions about the war between Ukraine and Russia on Today Explained from Vox since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. Back then, we asked why Ukraine essentially had to fight Russia alone. We asked what it is about the Ukrainians fighting this war alone that has made surrender impossible. We asked if Ukraine was winning, if Russia was winning, as well as whether the war was unwinnable and if this, for Vladimir Putin, was some kind of holy war. We've asked about cyber war, mercenaries, sanctions, and exports. We've asked about tanks and drones and javelin missiles and funding. We've asked how this war could end even though there's still no end in sight. But today, we're going to ask a new question. Is President Trump abandoning Ukraine? Hi, I'm Alex Ward. I'm a national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Alex, let's maybe start with the most unexpected news out of this war in recent days, that Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire. Did you talk to President Putin or President Zelensky? We talked. We signed agreements. Well, let's put a pin in the fact that Melania did it. It's possible she had a role. I'm going to personally, without. Too much reporting to say that it was probably more Pope Leo. Pope Leo? Melania stole Pope Leo's ceasefire? I think a little bit. I think it's possible. Okay, look, this ceasefire is not a small thing, right? It is a humanitarian ceasefire in the southern Ukrainian city of Oleshky. Once home to 24,000 people in the Kherson region, now around 2,000 are left. The main route out of Oleshky is strewn with mines and burnt out cars. They are facing stave. The last food delivery to Oleshky was in May. Critics would say this allows the Russians to rearm and regroup, and I guess at the same time also the Ukrainians. The question is, does it actually have that much influence over the war? No. It's a very, very small targeted ceasefire, but it is a potential signal that deals can be made. Now, the Russians are very much saying, look at Melania Trump, the first lady, look at how important she was to all this. And if I'm the Russians, I would love to be saying things like that, because they're the ones who are saying, President Trump feels like, oh, the Russians are being very generous towards my wife and to my family, and therefore I kind of side with them. I think she's doing better than the professionals right now. So it feels very convenient that the Russians are pumping that up and that even the White House is pumping up Melania Trump's influence. Now, I don't want to discredit her. I'm sure she did work on this. When did she become a negotiator in this war? From the beginning, she has made trying to get basically kidnapped children by Russia back, to Ukraine. That has been a major focus of hers in this war. She cares very deeply about that issue in her defense. A transparent free-flow exchange of health-related information surrounding all children who have fell victim to this war. Now, is she the driving force behind this ceasefire? Is she the number one reason it happened? It's totally possible. There's just a lot of skepticism out there about whether, you know, Kyiv and Moscow were brought to the table. Brought to the table and brow-beaten by the First Lady. Again, very possible. But both sides, being Ukraine and Russia, have an incentive to play up her role. Okay, so unclear who deserves more credit here, Pope Leo of the Vatican or Melania Trump of Mar-a-Lago. But one thing that's clear is this is not a ceasefire for the whole war. It's just relegated to one city. How come just one city? That's all they could agree to, right? If we're looking at this war at a bigger scale, there's been a massive discussion about how to get an end to the Ukraine-Russia war. The U.S. last week was able to broker some sort of discussion or a commitment, I should say, to have trilateral talks between the Ukrainians, Russians, and the Americans with the goal toward ending the war. And you've heard President Zelensky of Ukraine say, Look, we can call it ceasefire. We can call it ceasefire. We can call it stop the killings. We can call it freeze the conflict. He's been saying that for a long time. The only one thing that is important, not the item, the result, we have to move from the war time. We have to move to diplomatic way how to get real end of this war, how to get peace. Putin goes, no, thank you. I would like basically a handover of the territory I want. Even though I've been unable to conquer it after nearly five years. It's unclear if they're even going to get into the room for those trilateral negotiations. And if they do, it will probably be at a lower technical level. So are we ever going to get to the point that Putin and Zelensky and Trump get in a room all whole hands and say war over? Highly doubt it. You know, but that is the goal they're after. So you see the Trump administration, the Kremlin and Kiev all point to this Oleschke ceasefire. It's kind of like, hey, this could be a model for the much bigger deal. But I want to be clear that. This is a this Oleschke thing is important, but it really is aimed at a humanitarian ceasefire. Since there's a lot of food that isn't getting in, a lot of people are suffering and potentially, you know, leads to some relief. But there are a lot of people around Ukraine and many bombed out cities that are going, hey, what about us? Right. We are hungry, too. We don't have certain services. And winter is coming, not to quote Game of Thrones, but winter is coming. And the Russians have bombed out a lot of Ukraine's energy. Infrastructure, which is going to make this winter potentially very brutal, as a lot of folks will not have heating or the necessities they need to survive a really cold, really cold temperatures. And you use the H word, which. One of Trump's chief negotiators, Steve Witkoff, also used last week, he called Vladimir Putin a humanitarian. My president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian. I'm a humanitarian also, sir. And I salute that. I commend you and I thank you again. Which had a lot of people shook because famously Vladimir Putin also started this war. Yeah, it's like calling Freddy Krueger a nails enthusiast. It kind of it just doesn't really make a lot of sense. I mean, yes. Has Vladimir Putin released Americans that he took hostage? Yes. Has he returned some children? Is that his government, his forces have taken? Yes. I don't know if that makes you humanitarian. That's kind of like praising the the arsonist for like throwing a bucket of water on the house fire. And it's not just calling him a humanitarian. It's getting rid of the Lindsey Graham sanctions on Russia, which is essentially like handing Russia billions of dollars. Right. Yeah, there's a lot of weirdness here. First of all, I want to on the Graham bill. It's a really, really weird bill. And frankly, it's a pretty bad bill. Despite the fact that. Democrats and Republicans love it. What it basically calls for his tariffs on countries that purchase Russian energy. But to your point, what this did, I mean, the way Trump explains it is he waived the punishments, the economic punishments, because otherwise the Russians would not have returned Stephen Hubbard. And there might not have been this electricity fire. There might not have been a bunch of other benefits, let's say. And I guess another argument President Trump was making for removing these tariffs. Sanctions on Russia was that it would lower diesel costs here in the United States. Has that actually happened? Well, right. That's the other bit is that the Russians agreed to a diesel deal where they would basically export diesel to the United States. And for in President Trump's mind, that will lower costs because President Trump and political allies of his, like Elon Musk of SpaceX, say that is the reason diesel prices have skyrocketed across the U.S. However, when you talk to analysts and just look at the data, it is the Iran war that has had a greater effect on diesel prices. Not to say that the Russia Ukraine war hasn't had any, but it's it's much less because there is just very little Russian diesel in the American market for sure, but also in the global market. So what the what the U.S. is receiving from Russia is not nothing, but effectively nothing, because it's just not enough to alleviate the diesel concerns across the country and to lower prices to a meaningful amount. And we could see President Trump is effective. Scrambling to make good on his promises of lowering prices as the midterms approach to the point that he's willing to make a deal with the invading country in the war he's trying to end in order to lower gas prices at home. A lot of people see these developments, Alex, the diesel thing, the calling Putin a humanitarian and think that the United States is allegiances have shifted, that we've maybe abandoned Ukraine at the moment. Is that fair? I don't think we can. Say that with any sense of certainty. I mean, everyone's always been kind of like, well, we know where Trump's sort of feelings are here. He wants a big deal with Russia. He wants an economic deal with Russia. He wants to improve relations with Vladimir Putin. And so he kind of always returns to the mean, even if he sort of flirts with Ukraine. But below President Trump's sort of unique style of deal making, let's say, you know, the U.S. intelligence community is helping Ukraine at a large amount to defend against Russia, to potentially target. Russians, the U.S. is selling weapons. to Europeans for the Europeans to deliver to Ukraine. It is nowhere near at the level of weapons support that's during the Biden administration, but that intelligence support seems to be at a higher level than during the Biden years. So as much as President Trump talks about how much he would like a deal with Russia and is angry with Zelensky, there's a lot of things happening underneath him that are actually pretty helpful to Ukraine. And it's not like President Trump has purposefully hampered Ukraine's defenses a lot. I mean, there are some questions about, you know, sudden intelligence shutoffs and delays of important weapons. Like, I am not saying President Trump has been a staunch defender and a staunch supporter of Ukraine here. And there have been some hiccups. But if you look at sort of the grand totality, Ukraine is still being defended by the United States. You can have a quibble about to what extent, but it is still being done. And the U.S. is still being defended by the United States. And the U.S. is still being done. And then you go to, OK, well, you're supporting Ukraine, but you're also giving Russia kind of a lifeline here. Like, why are you doing that? And it almost seems like President Trump has an inability to kind of pick a side. He's playing both to a certain way. In his mind, he thinks that's the best way to get them both to the table and get a deal. But this is also the man that said he could do it in 24 hours. And we're nearly two years into his presidency. And right now, the best we can get is, hey, maybe we can get the Russians, Ukrainians and Americans to meet in a room for technical talks. Not nothing. And also, hey, got a ceasefire in a town in Ukraine. Not nothing, but it's nowhere near the big potentially Nobel Peace Prize winning deal that he's he's searching for. Elon Musk enters the chat when Today Explained returns. Elon Musk of it all. Tell us where we should start. Well, earlier this month, the Ukrainian military saw something pretty odd, which was their Starshield network started to slow down. And let me explain what that is. Yeah. So you listeners may know of Starlink, right? That's the satellite based internet network that Elon Musk has set up, part of a SpaceX company. Now, there's Starlink. And then there's Starshield. And Starshield is the military exquisite suite that allows basically militaries to use the Starlink network to bomb or to attack or defend themselves. We can't say too much about Starshield for obvious reasons because it's a top secret and stuff. But it is now a vital part of America's national security. So like if I'm if I'm going to Joshua Tree for the weekend, I might want to get some Starlink so I can have some killer Wi-Fi while I'm out in the wilderness. If I'm going to start a war, I might want some Starshield. Correct. But I don't think it's going to be sold to you. So they only give Starshield to nation states. Top secret and stuff. Correct. Now, there's an extra level of complexity here in which Ukraine actually has Starshield as subscription. So almost like a Netflix subscription. They don't have like the big system that like the United States has, for example, but they still have the ability on certain terminals on quote unquote whitelisted terminals within Ukraine. To use the Starlink terminals to then download the Starshield subscription on top of them to do their business. OK, so really think of it as like war Netflix on their Starshield terminals. And that system allowed the Ukrainians to fly interceptors and drones at basically unlimited speeds to prevent Russian attacks. Right. So to like meet the missile in the air, stop them from hitting their target or to launch drones of their own to hit their targets. Now, you need unlimited speeds because these things are going quite fast and those Russian missiles are coming in quite fast. But the speeds were throttled to or slowed down to about 160 kilometers an hour or about 100 miles per hour. Now, that rendered these things relatively useless. Right. So that made it a lot easier for the Russian attacks to get through Ukrainian air defenses and a lot harder for the Ukrainians to launch their weapons. And so they're going, what happened here? Is this a technical glitch? Is this hacking? Is this something else? And we were able to get through it. And we were able to report at the journal that, in fact, Elon Musk flipped the proverbial switch here. He is the one who, at his own company, slowed down the Ukrainian speeds. OK, there's a lot to unpack here. Let's start with just how long Starshield speeds were slowed down for. Was this like a one off? Did it happen for an hour one night? Was this over the course of days, weeks? What? It was about 10 days or so. 10 days in October, where essentially this subscription Ukraine has to this program that Elon Musk owns has been slowed down and thus affected their ability to conduct this war with Russia. Correct. Now, what happened? Who does Ukraine blame? And what do we find out? Well, there was a game of whodunit. When this first happened, I mean, the Ukrainian military was going, what's going on? I hope that it's a mistake. Maybe, huge technical problem. I don't know. People at the White House didn't know what was going on, right? They were surprised. I don't know who did it, but I was not involved. And there was a soft, unofficial internal investigation within the administration of going, did someone like do this? Was there some sort of secret green light within the White House or the Pentagon or anything like that? And the one thing, you know, the journal was able to reveal for sure is that Elon Musk was involved. That Musk, and it makes sense, right? It is his company. But that he flipped the proverbial switch and led to the slowdown himself. And initially, when news of the slowdown happened, he went out and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's Starlink, the civilian internet service, and Starshield, the military service, and I, you know, control Starlink, but. Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS. So Musk was implicating President Trump. And over the weekend, Elon goes on Twitter and what? Sort of defends these moves? Yeah, in many ways, he says like, yeah, I did it, that I had some role in this. And he says, look, the Ukrainians violated Starlink's terms of services. But he also gives, puts out this odd statement that looked written by like a PR person. I mean, he might have done it, but it looked sort of professionally written in his voice, in which he basically says, look, the Ukrainians violated Starlink's terms of services. And he also puts out this odd statement where he says, look, the Ukrainians violated Starlink's terms of services. And they exploited a loophole. I have now closed that loophole and all is well with the world. Well, I've got some questions about that. Number one, if it was Starlink, if Starlink is the issue, then why was Starshield throttled? Top secret. I was going to ask you the same question because I don't exactly understand that. Do you? No, not yet. I don't understand that yet. If his contention is that Starlink was the problem, then why was the military part of this the one that was the problem? The one that got slowed down. And if the loophole is closed, as he claims, then why are the speeds back? So there are some questions here we still don't know, including I want to know that all of our reporting about Musk's role in all this does not preclude the possibility that he got some sort of political signal from the White House, that in fact, someone said, hey, we're mad at Zelensky. We should show them who's boss and we should show them how much they rely on America and send some sort of signal. That's possible. In fact, that's what Musk claimed earlier, that he basically heard something from the administration. Now, oddly, after Musk says all that and raises a bunch of questions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was traveling to Central Asia and India, and he was asked by reporters a ton about this. But Starlink is a private company. They have a contract. They have contractual terms upon how that technology can be used. The important point is we cannot direct a private company as to the decisions they make or not make. What I can tell you with certainty is that Starlink is a private company. They have contractual terms upon how they make decisions. What I can tell you with certainty is the president of the United States, nor anyone in our system ever requested that any changes to that system be made. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said basically the exact same thing. A bit later, Vice President J.D. Vance says, look, I think it's completely understandable that he doesn't want to get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the United States government effectively directing him on what to do. Wow. And then you have President Trump go out and call Musk and get this thing turned on, even though it had been days of the U.S. government's position being like, look, that's a private company's thing. Was this whole episode between Ukraine and Elon Musk and the White House and Starshield, was it embarrassing enough for any party for it to just not happen again? Or could Elon Musk and the White House, who knows who else, collaborate again to just turn off Ukraine's Wi-Fi essentially and stall this war effort? Well, this remains a question. Like, does Elon Musk effectively have a kill switch for his own system? And or, Is the U.S. government secretly trying to throttle it? this. I'll tell you, there are European officials who, of course, rely on Starlink today and had planned to build military systems atop it, right, with Starshield, going, well, if Elon's got a kill switch or if he can do this unilaterally, why would we, like, risk doing this? But if Elon Musk has shown through this action that he can slow down Ukraine's military service single-handedly, if that is indeed what happened, then, like, why would you as another nation buy his system or build your military system atop it? So there are pretty big ramifications here once we find out what's going on. And there's a political ramification, too, because you've got a bunch of Democrats already signaling, like, if Democrats take one or both houses of Congress, they are going to be investigating Musk and they're going to be investigating what exactly happened with this slowdown and what precise role he had and if any, there was any sort of order coming from the White House. Do we see this as a major shift in this war? I think it is more drama than a realignment, because at the end of the day, the U.S. is still providing Ukraine with weapons, intelligence support, like, that hasn't been cut off. And Trump did call Musk and say, hey, turn this thing back on, right? He didn't have to do that. It could have been because of media embarrassment or it could have been because Trump thought it was the wrong thing to do. So I don't want to say, like, you know, Trump is against Ukraine and pro-Russia. I don't think that's what's happening. I think it's a more nuanced story. I think what's happening is Trump, as he approaches the end of his presidency and the end of his political life in power, he is looking for a legacy-defining foreign policy win. Trump is sort of weirdly playing both sides. And I think the problem is, as he's playing both sides, it's actually not leading to a coherent diplomatically. It's not leading to a coherent diplomatic strategy to end the war. He's kind of muddling through it. Now, granted, in such a situation, who ends up getting the raw end of the deal? It's the weaker country. And Ukraine is the weaker country right now, which is why it's needed Europe and the United States to support it. But if U.S. support wanes, right, and if political change in Europe, which is underway, starts to turn against Ukraine, too, then it's Zelensky and the Ukrainians who have a really, really big problem. Alex Ward is breaking news at The Wall Street Journal. Kelly Wessinger and Denise Guerra are producing audio for Today Explained with help from Miranda Kennedy, Gabriel Donatov, Bridger Dunigan and David Tadishore. And me, I'm Sean Ramos for More Tomorrow. The Wall Street Journal is a production of the U.S. Department of State.