Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will in Scottsdale, Arizona on December 1, 2022 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House on January 20, 2025 marked a major departure from the Biden Administration on foreign policy, including American relations with Ukraine during its war with Russia and the United States' role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trump and Vice President JD Vance had some harsh words for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he visited the White House in late February 2025, which, according to conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, will be remembered as one of Trump's worst foreign policy blunders.
"Fifteen months ago, in an Oval Office tantrum that will live in infamy, President Donald Trump ordered Ukraine to surrender," Will argues in a late May Washington Post column. "He told President Volodymyr Zelensky, 'You don’t have the cards.' He saw an incurable mismatch with Russia."
Trump and Vance angrily berated Zelensky in the White House, accusing the Ukrainian president of being ungrateful to the U.S. And quite a few Trump critics, from Democrats to Never Trumpers, accused him of being Russian President Vladimir Putin's "useful idiot."
Trump, Will emphasizes, badly underestimated Zelensky during that February 2025 meeting.
"Was Ukraine a tulip confronting a bulldozer?" Will writes. "Some tulip. Overrated bulldozer. Russia's subsequent stumble was dramatized this month by precautions Ukraine forced Vladimir Putin to take regarding Russia's annual Victory Day. Usually, the May 9 parade of military formations and hardware lasts much longer than this year's 45 minutes. There were fewer men and machines because Moscow now lives with the threat of Ukrainian drones."
The Never Trump conservative continues, "Staging areas for the parade would have been inviting targets. In a splendid taunt, Zelensky announced that Ukraine would 'permit' the parade by not targeting Red Square that day.
Zelensky, according to Will, is making it clear that surrender is the last thing on his mind.
"Putin's limp recent assessment of the war was, 'I believe the matter is coming to a close,'" Will notes. "'The matter,' his 'special military operation' to extinguish Ukrainian nationhood, began 51 months ago. He assumed it would require at most a few weeks. So far this year, Russia has captured about 0.04 percent of Ukraine — and in April, Putin's forces experienced a net loss of territory. By this month, The Economist estimates, the human cost of 4¼ years of aggression has been about 3 percent of Russia's pre-war population of fighting-age men killed or wounded…. A former senior Russian government official, writing anonymously for The Economist, says the war Russia started has reached a situation known in chess as 'zugzwang,' when every move worsens the position."
The Never Trump conservative continues, "By the end of this year, two current unknowns might be known: how Putin might lash out in response to the pain of Ukraine's military revival. And how Trump might lash out in response to the painful (to him) fact that, refuting his clairvoyance, Ukraine holds good and improving cards."