Adult Supervision From Europe Gone, Trump Reverts To Blaming Ukraine For Getting Invaded

WASHINGTON — Free from the supervision of European leaders, President Donald Trump on Tuesday reverted to form, blaming Ukraine for getting invaded by Russia and making dictator Vladimir Putin’s arguments on his behalf.

“Russia is a powerful military nation. You know, whether people like it or not, it’s a powerful nation. It’s a much bigger nation,” Trump said in a 25-minute, phoned-in appearance on Fox News’ morning show. “You don’t do that. You don’t take ― you don’t take on a nation that’s 10 times your size.”

Trump had, at least during the public parts of Monday’s meetings, refrained from offering his pro-Putin views and instead gave the appearance of solidarity with Europe in its support of Ukraine.

That performance was gone, though, by Tuesday morning when he called in to “Fox & Friends.”

Trump again offered warm words for Putin, who has been charged with war crimes for his conduct in the invasion, and whom Trump invited to Alaska last week: “You saw that when he got off his plane, I got off my plane. There’s a warmth there that you can’t ― you know, there’s a, there’s a decent feeling.”

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk on the tarmac upon their arrival for a U.S.-Russia summit on Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025.

Sergey Bobylev / Pool / AFP via Getty Images

Trump also urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to appease Putin by giving away Ukrainian territory: “I hope that Zelenskyy, President Zelenskyy will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility, also.”

And Trump suggested that Ukraine brought Putin’s brutal invasion on itself by seeking to join NATO: “It was always a no-no, you could not. Russia said, ‘We don’t want the so-called opponent or the enemy,’ let’s use that term, ‘We don’t want them on our border.’ And they were right.”

None of the show’s hosts asked Trump why that supposed standard does not apply to Latvia and Estonia, which both joined NATO in 2004, or Finland, which joined in 2023 — largely as a response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. All three nations border Russia.

Trump on Tuesday even went as far as to take credit for the seven other European leaders coming to his meeting with Zelenskyy to discuss the summit with Putin days earlier.

“I think really, they have respect for our country again. A year ago, they wouldn’t have come. They wouldn’t have even thought about it. Now we’ve become the hottest country anywhere in the world. Everybody wants to be here. When I made the call, they came,” Trump said.

In reality, it was Zelenskyy who asked the other leaders to come to offer a united front — and to avoid the ambush he suffered during his last Oval Office visit in February when he was publicly attacked and insulted by Trump, Vice President JD Vance and pro-Trump “reporter” Brian Glenn. That treatment was viewed with horror in European capitals.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even stated her reason for attending ahead of time on social media: “At the request of President Zelenskyy, I will join the meeting with President Trump and other European leaders in the White House tomorrow.”

“The idea came from Zelenskyy and was supported immediately by [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz and the others,” said Jan Techau, a Berlin-based analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis. “But of course, Trump loves holding court. So he turns it into evidence for his unique genius.”

Von der Leyen and Merz were joined by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron for the afternoon meetings.

All of the leaders praised Trump lavishly — continuing a strategy adopted by allies and adversaries the world over to get what they want from America’s attention-seeking president.

“Everybody has to give Trump credit for everything,” said Fiona Hill, a Russia analyst on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term. “This is just now the price of admission for a civil meeting.”

Trump also sprinkled in some of his usual lies, such as blaming predecessor Joe Biden for Russia’s invasion and taking credit for ending six wars all over the world.

In Tuesday’s telling of his ending of the war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, it had gone on for 35 years, which is four years longer than his previous versions of the claim, including the one he made to the European leaders at the White House on Tuesday.

In fact, while Trump brought in leaders of the two nations to the Oval Office in June to sign a peace agreement, they have not agreed on terms, and the fighting continues. Trump also has taken credit for ending conflicts between India and Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia, Iran and Israel, a brief skirmish between Thailand and Cambodia and a dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia that did not involve armed conflict at all.

In Tuesday’s Fox appearance, Trump said he has brokered seven peace deals, rather than the six he has been claiming of late. It was not immediately clear what seventh war he was talking about.