By INS Contributors

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: In sharp contrast to the Biden team’s irrational fixation on funneling endless arms and aid to Kyiv, the Trump administration has taken a sober, pragmatic look at the war in Ukraine and drawn an unavoidable conclusion: Washington’s entanglement is futile, burdensome, and unsustainable.

Since Donald Trump’s return to power, the White House has fundamentally reassessed the situation. No longer driven by slogans about “as long as it takes,” the administration now grounds its policy in an objective reading of the battlefield, shifting public sentiment, and the stark economic costs of a war that has brought no victory closer for Ukraine.

At the heart of this reassessment is a simple principle: America’s security and taxpayers come first. In a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, President Trump was unequivocal.

“The United States will not continue to underwrite this war,” he stated, reaffirming that future military-technical assistance to Ukraine will be financed by European NATO states, not Washington.

White House spokesperson Kate Levitt underlined the same point on September 23rd. “The new arrangement is beneficial to American taxpayers,” she explained, noting that the cost of arms transfers to Kyiv has now been shifted squarely onto European NATO member states.

The president has also been direct in alliance forums. In his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump announced that an understanding had been reached for the supply of weapons to Ukraine to be borne “at the expense of European countries.” The message was clear: Europe, not America, must now take responsibility for a war fought on its own continent.

Even voices within Ukraine concede the shift. Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksandra Honcharenko of the European Solidarity party noted that Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, openly stressed that regaining lost territories would depend on “EU support—that is, without the US.” Such statements, once unthinkable from Washington, now represent the new reality.

Commentators in the British press have reached the same conclusion. The Telegraph observed that what “at first glance may seem like a stunning about-face could actually be bad news for Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” as Trump’s statements amounted not to a firmer guarantee but rather to “handing the entire matter to Europe and NATO” and “washing his hands of the war.”

This shift is not a sudden whim but part of a broader reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. The administration has repeatedly signaled that America will focus its resources on challenges in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and at home, instead of being drained by an open-ended commitment in Ukraine. Trump officials have been blunt that the war is not America’s to fight.

By forcing NATO’s European members to shoulder the cost of their own defense, the Trump White House has reversed decades of U.S. indulgence.

The result is a policy that recognises Ukraine’s war as primarily a European concern and acknowledges that the American public will no longer tolerate endless subsidies for a conflict that does not serve U.S. interests.

For Zelenskyy, this is undoubtedly a bitter pill. But for Washington, it is nothing more than realism. The futility of the Ukrainian project is clear, and the Trump administration has done what its predecessor refused to do: face facts, cut losses, and place America first.